


you lift the veil (my eyes are open wide)

by reachedthebitterend



Series: strangeness and charm [2]
Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Blood Magic, F/F, F/M, M/M, More Exposition than the Previous Part, Multiple POVs Per Chapter, Temporary Character Death, Witch AU, semi graphic fight scenes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-07-15
Packaged: 2020-03-05 15:05:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 24,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18831106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reachedthebitterend/pseuds/reachedthebitterend
Summary: The One Where Alex Fights Against Destiny, Liz is the Chosen One, and Maria Saves the Day





	1. all doors are open to the believer

**Author's Note:**

> I hope y'all are ready for this!!

**.maria.**

Maria doesn’t look up when the door opens and shuts loudly. There are only two people who would just walk into the bar without knocking, and only one of them would slam the door afterwards.

Isobel drops a small pouch right in front of her. It hits the counter with a small poof that dispels lilac powder into the air that smells of lavender and chamomile.

Maria looks up at her then.

Isobel looks like she hasn’t slept, not that anyone who isn’t Maria, Guerin, or Max would be able to tell.

Maria feels a little stab of guilt that she smothers immediately, raising an eyebrow and poking a finger at the pouch making sure it wasn’t cursed or anything.

She can feel Isobel rolling her eyes.

“It’s to help you sleep,” Isobel says sounding impatient like this is the fifth time she’s explaining herself. “You’ve been keeping me up for the last three days.”

Maria gives her an impassive look, and Isobel just rolls her eyes again and huffs drops down on the bar stool behind her.

Maria crosses her arms over her chest, “We’re not open for business.”

“I’m not interested in anything you’re selling,” Isobel says leaning her elbows against the bar and tilting her head as her eyes drop down to Maria’s mouth and back up again.

Maria clenches her jaw so she doesn’t do something ridiculous like lick her lips and gives Isobel an unimpressed look.

Isobel sighs and drops her head to her hand, actually looking as tired as she is. “At least let me help then?”

Maria scoffs and picks up the pouch to put it somewhere where it won’t be in the way.

Isobel bristles immediately.

“You know what I can do,” she says voice low and it makes Maria narrow her eyes at her. “I’m more than capable of easing the way so that you can finally get to completion.”

Maria rolls her eyes as she turns away.

Isobel sighs and sits up. “I’m serious. If it doesn’t work then at least I tried everything that I could. I want to sleep some time this week.”

Maria looks back at her.

Isobel leans forward again. “What’s the worse that can happen?”

She rolls her eyes when Maria gives her a look. “Besides the obvious.”

Maria just continues to watch her weighing her options.

“No spells,” Maria says firmly. She has no interest in experiencing the out of control dazed feeling that followed, where everything felt like too much and she couldn’t control the things she said or what she did.

Magic was almost like a drug to non witches, euphoric when you’re right in the middle of a spell, but the come down was a bitch. The stronger the spell, the harder the fall.

And just like a drug the more magic you did the more you wanted to do.

Isobel nods her head and waves her hands in the air, “We’ll hold hands and do it the old fashioned way, I promise.”

Maria rolls her eyes again, but takes a deep breath and walks over to Isobel.

Isobel holds her hands out in front of her, and wiggles her fingers. Bursts of emerald static electricity spark across her fingers as they brush together, and Maria can feel the warmth that is Isobel lighting up in the back of her head.

If Maria closes her eyes, she would be able to see the strands of bright shiny emerald and sandy pale yellow woven together, binding them to each other.

She would also be able to make out the faint impressions of emerald-gold and emerald-sapphire that was Michael and Max, respectively.

Isobel stills her fingers and holds her hands out in front of her.

Maria takes another deep breath and raises her own hands. She holds them in front of Isobel’s just barely touching, and looks at Isobel for a long moment. Isobel looks back, eyes wide not hiding anything.

“Don’t you trust me?” Isobel asks and then wrinkles her nose. “No, trust isn’t the right word. Don’t you  _believe_ in me?”

Maria inhales sharply and looks away blinking several times before she inhales shakily.

Maria remembers vividly the last time that she did this with Isobel. The way that her powers heighten Maria’s and make her see more, hear more,  _feel more_.

Maria swallows hard and nods her head once before she presses their palms together.

Isobel gives her a smile and then closes her eyes.

Maria sees as their hands light up, crackles of emerald static and a sunshine yellow glow.

She closes her eyes and exhales and concentrates.

It’s almost like all of her senses dim and narrow down to Isobel, the cadence of her breathing, the way her hands feel against Maria’s soft and warm and tingly, the way the scent of amber and freshly cut grass and freshly burnt sage  fills the air, the way Maria can  _feel_ her like strings wrapped around the base of her neck, slowly tugging at her until Maria inhales deeply and focuses on the problem.

Maria usually doesn’t have any trouble receiving her visions. She gets this anxious restless feeling in the pit of her stomach right before she goes to sleep, and wakes up the next morning surrounded in sketches she did while half asleep after being woken up by a vision.

But this time it feels as though something is blocking her.

Isobel immediately spots the problem and nudges.

Maria gasps all the air rushing out of her in an instant, and she feels a little lightheaded as Isobel threads their fingers together, holding on tightly as she nudges again.

Maria whimpers low in her throat as it starts to feel like Isobel is trying to tear her brain apart and tightens her fingers around Isobel’s finding herself swaying forward and bumping into the bar.

It starts to hurt a little too much, and Maria is about to tell her to just stop when the pressure pops like a bubble.

Maria gasps and her fingers hold on even tighter as she gets a flash of Alex dropping to his knees, his face covered in the shadows and the ripples as he does, like smoky black waves in the air throwing everything around him backwards, and as it washes over her the scent of a rushing river and smoke and ash fill her senses and the feeling that Alex isn’t Alex, or isn’t  _just_ Alex gets a hold of her.

Before she can dig into it, Isobel is gasping and tearing her hands out of Maria’s hold.

Maria distantly hears a clatter, like a bar stool falling backwards, and Isobel says something sharp and fast, but she’s too busy searching underneath the bar for her sketch pad and a pencil.

She finds them and sets them down on top of the bar and presses the pencil down on the paper a little too hard at first, stark lines outlining the scene.

By the time she’s done, her fingers are smudged in grey, her head aches and her eyes feel gritty, but the restless anxious feeling in the pit of her stomach is still there.

Maria yawns and covers her mouth with the back of her hand before she looks up to tell Isobel thanks for trying, but it’s to see that Isobel is gone.

She frowns for a second before she looks down to the sketch and worries her bottom lip between her teeth.

It’s Alex for sure, and he looks like he’s out in the Turquoise Mines in the middle of a fight which isn’t unusual, her vision could be of Alex fighting of something. It wouldn’t be the first time that it happened.

The problem is with his shadow.

It’s black and huge and looks like a maned wolf with the body of a lion snarling with it’s mouth open wide showing his huge sharp teeth.

She doesn’t understand what it means yet, and maybe she would if she could get a sense of the whole vision, because she has a feeling that whatever is going to happen is going to change everything.

She puts the sketchpad away beneath the bar where it won’t accidentally get wet and tucks the pencil next to the register before heading to the bathroom to wash her hands. She has several more things to do before she needs to get everything ready for opening tonight.

*

**.alex.**

Alex stares at Michael as he sleeps.

He’s sitting by Michael’s feet, a hand wrapped around Michael’s ankle. He’d managed a few hours of sleep, with Michael wrapped around him, but the pain in his leg wakes him up like it always does.

Alex’s eyes dart to his leg, resting alongside Michael’s body, the metal shines blue activating the sigils and an icy cool feeling spreads along the heated pain where the metal is fused to his skin.

The surgeons at the Facility in Munich had told him that it’ll take him some time to get used to it, but sometimes Alex thinks that this is punishment for the protection spell.

Alex is good at taking the pain and compartmentalizing it and setting it aside to be dealt with later, and act like everything is okay in front of everyone else, he’s had a lot of practice growing up, but like with everything else, Michael is the exception.

Around him, Alex feels like he doesn’t have to just take it, that Michael will help him if Alex needs it. And so far, he’s been right.

Alex has learned in the last couple of months that he trained to fight with his new leg how to roll with it when his leg just doesn’t work like he’s used to, but Michael is always reaching out and helping before Alex notices that it’s happened.

Alex’s eyes dart back to Michael.

He doesn’t understand it really. Michael should hate him.

Alex hates himself for what happened to Michael.

If he had just listened to Mimi when she told him to leave the Guerin kid alone, then maybe their lives would’ve been different.

But Alex doesn’t think that there is any force in any dimension that would’ve been able to prevent what had happened and what’s going to happen.

Alex’s eyes fall from Michael to where Andro is staring at him, a pile of shadows right by his shoes, silently judging him.

Alex refuses to be judged by something that isn’t corporeal most of the time.

He looks back to Michael ignoring the tendrils of judgement he can feel coming from Andro and tightens his fingers around his ankle.

Alex’s conundrum when it comes to Michael has always been that he wants to be as close to him as possible much more than he wants to stay away to keep him safe.

With an ocean and thousands of miles between them, Alex was able to resist the urge, but everything changed after Munich.

Alex came back to Roswell in a misguided attempt to protect Michael from afar, and maybe try to subvert the Prophecy at the same time. He should’ve known better than to try to mess with Fate.

A phone rings startling Alex, making him let go of Michael.

Michael twitches and then hisses in pain and moves. Alex presses his hand to his shin, but he’s already waking up.

The phone keeps ringing and Alex spots it on the counter. Michael’s phone, an ancient looking landline with a rotary dial that literally looks like it’s going to fall apart the longer it keeps ringing.

Before Alex can decide what to do, Michael is raising his hand in the air and twitching his fingers.

The handset flies into his hand, making the rest of the phone slide along the counter.

“I’m sleeping,” Michael’s voice is croaky and he still sounds tired.

Alex bites down on his lip as the guilt floods him and he darts a look over to his shoes to see that Andro disappeared sometime while Michael was waking up.

_Traitor_ , he thinks at them, and gets a nudge back in acknowledgement that feels like amusement.

Alex looks back to Michael to see that he moved to lie on his back and is staring at him, not paying attention at all to what whoever is on the phone is saying.

Michael’s gaze moves all over him, and touches his tongue to his bottom lip and moves his gaze back to Alex’s.

Alex knows, objectively, that he’s physically fit, given that his job keeps him in shape, and he’s not bad looking, given the comments made from people interested in getting into his pants, but it’s one thing to hear it from strangers he’s barely interested in, and another to see the appreciation for how he looks across Michael’s face.

Michael has a way of looking at him that made Alex feel like the hottest thing on two legs when he was seventeen, and it hasn’t changed.

Alex pulls his bottom lip into his mouth and looks back.

“Yeah, okay,” he says, interrupting the crackling flow of words that Alex can just barely make. “See you when you get here, Iz. But don’t expect me to be dressed.”

He hangs up the phone by tossing it backwards and it lands on the cradle, gently.

Alex is distracted by the mention of Isobel, but Michael’s brain is obviously on one track as he moves fast, and straddles Alex’s lap, pressing him back into the plywood headboard.

Alex’s head falls back on a moan as Michael sinks warm and heavy into his lap and leans down pressing his lips to Alex’s neck and dragging his lips up.

The phone starts ringing again.

“Guerin,” Alex says and clears his throat when his voice comes out breathless. “Wait.”

Michael kisses him.

Their lips touch and for one second Alex freezes, feeling like he’s right on the edge of a cliff, the exhilaration and the fear right before he moves, taking the plunge, and kissing Michael back.

Michael makes an approving noise against his mouth, and Alex slides his hands around Michael’s waist and pulls him in even closer until their chest are pressed together, licking into Michael’s mouth and deepening the kiss.

“Michael” Isobel’s voice fills the room, crackling through an old speaker, with a whirring sound in the background and making Alex pull away from Michael.. “I’ll be there in ten minutes. If you’re not dressed, I’m dragging you just like that to Max’s house.”

Michael groans and drops his forehead to Alex’s, sighing.

Alex swallows and tries not to look as panicky as he feels.

Isobel  _cannot_ see him here, or at all. Not while he still has Andro’s essence swimming through his blood, not until he tells Michael about the Deal, which was something that he’s going to have to tell him sooner rather than later, but right now in this moment, Alex can’t find the words to explain what happened to  _himself_ let alone someone else.

“I was so hoping that I could convince you to fuck me while you were all sleep warm and pliant,” Michael says, a questioning tone to his voice as he moves his hands to slide them down Alex’s arms, and grip his biceps, before he bites down on his bottom lip.

Alex inhales deeply and tries to remind himself that Isobel is going to be here any minute and he can’t afford to get distracted.

“I don’t sleep much these days,” Alex says honestly and moves his right leg beneath Michael so he gets the point. He licks his lips when Michael pulls back to look at him.

“I have to go,” he says when Michael parts his lips to talk.

Michael purses his mouth as he tilts his head and studies Alex for a second.

“Because of Isobel?” he asks raising an eyebrow, body going tense where he’s still settled on Alex’s lap.

Alex licks his lips not sure how to explain himself, but something must show on his face because Michael’s lips thin and he’s moving out of Alex’s lap before Alex can do or say anything.

“Fine. I need a shower anyway,” he walks towards the bathroom, and Alex turns to watch him.

“Gue-” he starts but Michael cuts him off.

“You can see yourself out.”

He steps out of his boxers and moves behind the curtain, drawing it close.

Alex blinks after him for a few silent seconds and then the water turns on, and then he moves.

The dismissal hurts a lot more than he’d been expecting, but it’s better than trying to come up with an excuse as to why he has to leave.

Alex puts on the clothes he’d taken out of Michael’s closet last night since his uniform had been a lost cause. He slides into his boots, not even bothering to tie them and is just reaching for the dagger that he’d turned into the trap for the demon last night when there are wet hands wrapping around his arms right above his elbows, and he can feel Michael’s hair dripping onto the back of his neck as he presses in close.

“I was planning on staying mad at you for at least a day,” Michael says voice low. “But you’re not fighting fair.”

Alex’s eyes fall shut as Michael tugs him back and presses in close against him. “Come back tonight?”

Alex is nodding before he can stop himself and Michael drops a kiss to the back of his neck, right where the collar of his shirt is.

“You can return my clothes then,” Michael says before he’s pushing Alex forward lightly, but not letting go. “Isobel should be here any minute.”

Alex swallows hard, “You should call her and tell her that if she’s actually planning to drag you out of here the protective circle isn’t going to let her through.”

Michael is quiet for a long silent, suspicious moment, but he doesn’t say anything else as he lets Alex go and walks back to his shower.

Alex inhales shakily and grabs the dagger, before he walks out of the door.

*

**.liz.**

Liz takes a deep breath and opens her eyes.

The bathroom mirror is foggy, and the patch that she had cleared up is already fogging over, but she can make out her blurry reflection.

She slowly lets the breath out and moves, unwrapping the towel from around her chest.

Her reflection is still blurry, but she can make the pale pink scar of the sigil right in the middle of her chest.

Max had called it the Evans Sigil, and had shown her the same mark cut into the palm of his hand. “It’s how the spell works.”

Because that was her life now apparently, sigils and spells and other impossible things.

She still doesn’t one hundred percent believe that Max is a wizard or whatever, but after last night, it wasn’t possible for her to say the same thing about demons.

She looks at the mark on her arm, the one that Max hadn’t known what it was, that he had called Michael to check out.

Michael had stared at the mark before turning to Max and saying. “If we die, I’m going to make sure to drag your ass to whatever hell dimension I end up going to.”

Liz found out last night after Michael had left and Max had dropped her home that the mark was how the demon could track her.

She inhales deeply and reminds herself that she is safe. Max’s house is protected or so he says, but even if it wasn’t, Liz feels much safer knowing that Max is nearby.

She feels a warmth in her chest, right against the mark, and she presses her palm over it, closing her eyes and concentrating on the feeling that she knows is Max.

It sends the warmth spiralling through her and she gasps, eyes flying open.

There is a knock on the door, starling her and making her drop her concentration.

She hears Max clear his throat, before he speaks. “Lunch is ready.”

“I’ll be right out,” she responds and waits until she hears him walking to start getting dressed.

She pulls out Rosa’s red lipstick from her bag. She’d stuffed it in there on a whim, but looking at the casing now, she can make out a small sigil that resembles the one on her chest, but different, drawn in sharpie right on the base.

She licks her lips and looks at her reflection again before she nods to herself decisively and uncaps the lipstick.

When she walks out into the living room, she finds Max across the room leaning against his desk reading from a thick leather bound book, cradled in his hands. His brow is furrowed and his lips move as he reads along, and Liz feels the warm feeling intensify inside of her at the thought that that’s something about Max Evans that hasn’t changed.

He looks up then straight at her as though he’d felt her, and Liz doesn’t know exactly how to feel about that. She also doesn’t exactly know how to feel about the way a smile tugs at the corners of his mouth and how his eyes go soft and warm when he sees her.

“I made pancakes,” he says as he closes the book and sets it behind him pushing away from the desk.

“For lunch?” Liz asks raising an eyebrow.

Max shrugs. “We slept through breakfast.”

“Right,” Liz says remembering why she was here in the first place.

She takes a deep breath and looks at Max seriously. “I have questions.”  
Max nods his head and takes a step closer before he stops. “I’ll tell you everything that I can, but why don’t we eat?”

“I’m not hungry,” Liz says reaching forward to rest her hands against the back of the couch. “I want to know why there is a demon coming after me.”

Max swallows and nods his head, “Okay.”

He walks forward and sits in the armchair opposite the couch Liz is leaning against. “Why don’t you sit down?”

Liz shakes her head and leans harder against the couch, “I’m good here.”

Max just nods his head and then sighs, resting his elbows on his knees as he looks up at her. “I already told you that I’m a witch.”

“What does that mean exactly? That you can do magic?” Liz asks straightening up and raising her hands in the air wiggling her fingers.

“Something like that,” Max says giving her a small smile. “More like, witches can do magic without needing to study or using special chants and charms and words. Witches can use memories and emotions to power their spells. Witch Hunters can also use magic, but they need help.”

“Witch Hunters?” Liz asks feeling a little incredulous.

Max nods his head. “Kind of like the police of our kind. They monitor magic use and make sure no one is doing magic illegally.”

Liz moves to lean against the arm of the couch, “There are laws?”

Max huffs out a small laugh, “Yeah.”

Liz stares at him for a moment, and then puts her hand to her chest and sees the way he looks down at his hand, fingers clenching close.

“And bringing someone back to life?” she asks because she has to know.

“Breaks several big laws,” Max admits leaning back in his seat. “Would put another black mark on my record, which would cost me my job.”

“That’s why Michael stayed behind,” Liz guesses and moves to sit down on the couch, needing to lean back against something.

“Michael can handle the Witch Hunters,” Max says and leans forward again. “The black mark isn’t the only consequence. Black Level Magic is banned unless the circumstance is extreme and only then on approval of the Council, because it tears open the veil between dimensions.”

Liz narrows her eyes at him, and then blinks them, and opens them a little wide, before she looks away.

“So the demon came through when you saved me,” she says slowly as she looks over at Max’s bookshelf.

“Liz,” Max says and her eyes go to him, and he stands up, walking around the coffee table to sit in front of her. “Even if I had known that the demon would come through, I would’ve done it anyway. It’s worth it as long as you’re alive.”

Liz looks into his eyes and they’re wide and honest.

“Did I ever say thank you?” Liz asks holding her hand out and smiling lightly when Max immediately takes it in his and holds it gently between his hands.

“You don’t have to thank me,” Max says quietly.

He brings her hand up to his face and presses a kiss to the back of her hand. “I couldn’t not do it. Not after seeing you like that.”

His fingers slide to her wrist, fingertips pressing into her wrist, feeling her pulse.

Liz feels her heart jump in her chest, and Max’s eyes widen a little before he turns her hand in his hold and presses a kiss to her palm.

Liz gasps and her fingers twitch in his hold and she scrambles to remember what she was doing.

Which is when the door slams open.

Both Max and Liz turn towards the commotion.

Isobel comes in and stops as she catches sight of them.

She lowers her sunglasses and raises an eyebrow at them before she stumbles a little as Michael walks into her.

He glares at her and then at Max as he heads straight to the dining table, but doesnt say anything as he sits down and starts to eat from one of the plates Max had set.

Isobel snaps her fingers and bright green sparks light up against their hands, sending jolts of static electricity through Liz’s fingers.

She hisses in pain and tears her hand out of Max’s hold, feeling a jolt in her right ankle.

“Isobel,” Max reprimands.

Isobel shrugs taking her shades off and hitting them against the palm of her hand. “We need to talk.”

“I know,” he says standing up. “I was just explaining to Liz-”

“We have bigger problems than a demon wanting to possess your high school crush,” Isobel says dismissively.

Max darts a look to Liz and then back to Isobel.

Liz takes that little tidbit of information and stores it away to examine later.

“Like what?” Max asks and Liz can feel the apprehension spreading through her as Max crosses his arms over his chest and focuses on Isobel.

“The Hound is in Roswell.”


	2. the water is sweet but blood is thicker

******.alex.**

Alex isn't really expecting anyone to be there when he finally makes it to Jenna's place, so finding Kyle and Jenna eating burgers in the kitchen that obviously come from the Crashdown is an unpleasant surprise.

Especially because he's been avoiding speaking directly to Kyle since he stepped foot back in Roswell.

It seems like Alex is just going to have to deal with the fact that Fate is determined not to give him a break.

Alex inhales deeply and closes the door behind him.

“Someone didn't come home last night,” Jenna says in a mocking tone darting a look at him and then doing a double take, probably to quickly catalogue the bruises and abrasions she can see, and making sure that nothing needs immediate attention.

Kyle turns towards him as well, but instead of just staring and being assured that Alex is fine because he's still standing, Kyle stands up fast, sending the stool he'd been perched on flying backwards.

“What the hell happened to you?” he asks closing the distance between them as though he means to check Alex over himself.

Alex grabs his wrist tightly in his grip before Kyle can make contact. Kyle makes a choked off pained noise, looking at Alex with wide eyes.

“Touch me and I will dislocate your shoulder, Valenti,” Alex says and tightens his hold on Kyle's wrist so that he knows that he means it.

Kyle's eyes are wide and shocked. But he nods slowly.

Alex lets him go and walks over to where Jenna is still watching him with narrowed eyes.

He pulls the dagger out from where he'd tucked it along the inside of his boot and tosses it at her.

She catches it easily, by the hilt and makes a face when she realizes what it is.

“Whose grave did you dig up for this thing?”

“No one's,” Alex says sighing and heading towards the fridge. “I couldn't find it in the Book so I improvised.”

Alex turns with a bottle of water in his hands to Jenna glaring, dagger pointing at his face.

“You did not go fight a high level demon by yourself, especially one not in the Book,” she says and gives Alex a look like she was daring him to say that he did.

“I did not,” he assures her.

She glares harder.

“I had help,” he says, trying to look as innocent as possible.

She narrows her eyes even more, before she takes a step back and taps the tip of the dagger on her cheek as she eyes Alex up and down, taking in his clothes, or well, Michael's clothes.

Which he can tell she knows by the unadulterated amusement shining in her eyes and stretching her mouth when she finally looks back to his face.

“You didn't!” she says sounding scandalous and delighted. “Your dad has him labelled as Public Enemy Number One at the Facility and you're banging him?”

“No!” Alex says shaking his head vehemently, eyes darting to where Kyle is following their conversation with narrowed, confused eyes. “You were busy. My brothers would rather let me die. And I've seen his record.”

“I bet you have,” Jenna says smile widening even more with every excuse out of Alex's mouth, eyes wide open with glee.

Alex huffs out an annoyed breath. “Look can we just forget about the whole Guerin part of the equation, right now? We have bigger things to worry about, like the demon we have to trap.”

Jenna rolls her eyes, but walks over to the weapon’s safe to put the dagger away.

Alex looks at Kyle and asks, “What are you doing here anyway?”

“I've been trying to talk to you,” Kyle says stepping forward.

Alex nods, “I've been busy.”

Kyle gives him a look as though he doesn’t actually believe him, and Alex can’t actually blame him, but he has been busy.

He’s only been in Roswell for like a week and already there are powerful demons, deals with magical creatures that technically shouldn’t exist, and death threats.

“I received a letter from my dad,” Kyle continues patting his pockets. “He had someone send it to me when you returned to Roswell.”

Kyle pulls the letter out of one of his jacket pockets and hands it to Alex, who frowns as he puts his bottle of water on the counter to take the envelope.

“It said to come talk to you. That you would need help. I couldn't find you so I talked to your dad. He told me to talk to Jenna-”

Alex freezes and looks up at him while Jenna starts to swear in German. Kyle stops speaking, “What?”

Alex purses his mouth and reaches out with one hand closing his eyes and concentrating.

He feels it immediately, like a black hole in the area concentrated on Kyle, disrupting every single spell within proximity.

Alex steps forward grabbing Kyle's right arm and tugging the sleeve of his shirt up.

Kyle makes a noise in protest, but doesn’t tug his hand out of Alex’s hold.

“What did he tell you this was?” he asks as he stuffs the letter in his pocket and holds his other hand out.

“He said it belonged to my dad,” Kyle answers as Jenna hands Alex a dagger that had been tucked into  _her_ boot.

“Something to protect me because having the knowledge itself is a target.” 

It sounds like something his dad would say.

“It's an inhibitor,” Alex says sliding the blade beneath the bracelet wrapped around Kyle's wrist, and cutting it off quickly. “It’s probably been blocking the protective spells around the house the whole time you’ve been here.”

Jenna's cuckoo clock chimes one in the afternoon, and the inhibitor’s magic fizzles with a pop and grey sparks as Alex cuts through it.

At the same time Andro appears right on top of the counter a large lion growling low in their throat and staring out through the patio doors that lead outside, causing Kyle to yelp and scramble backwards, “ _What the f-?_ ”

The rest of his sentence is drowned out by the terrible howls of a pack of hellhounds which Alex hadn’t really been expecting, but he should’ve known better.

Jenna swears in French.

“Hellhounds at high noon,” she says sounding incredulous and pissed. “I thought you were just being dramatic when you said that your dad is trying to kill you.”

Alex huffs out a humourless laugh and closes his eyes, reaching out again. He can feel the protective barrier Jenna created when she moved in, but it’s weak. He can sense at least four hellhounds getting closer. The barrier will slow them down, but not for long.

“Okay,” Alex says dropping his hand. “There’s at least four. The barrier is still standing and will probably slow them down a bit but not enough. We need a plan of attack.”

He looks at Jenna who looks at him, and they both look up to the ceiling at the same time.

“The roof-” Jenna starts and Alex nods his head as they turn towards the weapon’s safe.

The low sonic boom of the hellhounds hitting the protective barrier ripples over them, sending Kyle into action.

“What’s going on- _whoa_!”

He stops moving as Andro blocks his way growling low in their throat.

Alex looks over to them and sends out impatient vibes at Andro. He really doesn’t have time for whatever hangups they  _and_ Michael have about Kyle.

Andro growls low, a warning and then disappears into thin air.

Alex can feel them prowling the edges of the circle, ready to help in slowing them down.

“What was that thing?” Kyle asks stepping closer to them. Another low boom shakes through the air. “And what is  _that_?”

“That  _thing_ ,” Alex says with a face as he reaches for his spare crossbow and straps it to his lower back. “Is a familiar and also none of your business.”

“The hellhounds,” Jenna continues strapping a huge pistol to her hip. “Are low level demons with little intelligence so they rely mainly on brute force. But they are also none of your business.”

She grabs a shotgun and moves towards him while Alex pulls out the sliding compartment where the swords are.

“Your job is to shoot anything that makes it past us in the face,” she holds the shotgun out to him and raises an eyebrow. “Think you can handle that?”

Alex turns around sword in hand as Kyle grabs the shotgun from Jenna. “I can handle it.”

Jenna makes a noise like she doesn’t believe him but she turns towards Alex and makes a face.

“Just don’t lose the sword this time,” she says as she steps forward and reaches for the sai swords, putting two into the sheathes against her thighs and two other ones behind her back.

Alex makes a scoffing noise and rests the blade of the sword against his shoulder, “You act like I do that on purpose.”

Jenna just rolls her eyes and they turn to Kyle who is just staring, looking between the two of them, mouth slightly open, eyes slightly glazed.

Before Alex can ask him what his problem is, there is another loud sonic boom this one accompanied by a sound like glass splintering.

“Okay,” Alex says and turns to Jenna who has a smirk on her face, and then looks back to Kyle. “You keep a look out through the patio doors. It’ll give you the biggest advantage, and please watch out for the fire chains. They’re poisonous.”

Alex turns to Jenna again and she salutes Kyle before turning and leading the way to the roof.

She climbs up out of her bedroom window, using the window ledge to push herself up.

Alex follows her, pulling himself up on the roof as the barrier breaks, a loud sound of shattering glass. Several howls sound in the air before Andro growls low and loud and one of the howls is cut off with a pained yelp.

“Ready?” Jenna asks as she watches the hellhounds get closer.

Alex nods his head and walks towards the middle of the space.

He inhales deeply, “Ready.”

“Okay,” Jenna says and stretches her hands over her head. “Let's go.”

She takes two running steps, and pushes off the edge of the roof, jumping straight down to land right in front of the pack.

Alex uses the momentum from the extra steps he'd taken to push himself further, flipping through the air to land behind them.

They both hit the ground one after the other. Alex’s leg gives beneath him and he rolls into it, dropping to the floor and somersaulting before he pulls the sword from where he’d strapped it against his back.

“Hello boys,” Jenna says cheerily.

Alex looks up and quickly counts four, not counting the one that Andro is keeping busy.

Alex immediately slashes against the back of the knees of the hellhound in front of him, getting to his feet and decapitating it as it falls to his knees, the roar dying in his throat and the ashes and smoke blowing past Alex as he moves forward to swing at the next.

“One,” he calls out and hears Jenna cursing, and then a grunt and the sound of a hellhound dying.

“Ditto,” she huffs and he hears the shwing of the sai swords being taken out of their sheathes.

Alex turns and blocks a punch with his sword. It makes a disgusting hissing sound against the hellhound’s knuckles as it splinters. He curses under his breath, throwing the useless hilt aside as he ducks beneath its other arm when it swings, twisting and kicking backwards, hitting the hellhound as hard as he could behind its knee.

The beast roars and goes down.

Alex turns to face it and backs up against Jenna. He reaches behind himself and tugs one of the sai swords strapped to her back out.

She makes a protesting sound, but moves when he does, turning with him and ducking down as Alex swings, using the momentum of the spin to stab the sai right into the head of the hellhound that Jenna had been facing.

He lets the turn spin him all the way around as the hellhound disintegrates and comes face to face with Jenna who gives him a grin.

“Two!” they say at the same time and laugh, breathless and giddy with adrenaline.

There is a loud tapping sound coming from the patio doors and they both turn to look at Kyle, who points at something behind them.

Alex turns in time to see Andro flying and landing in a heap with a pained yelp, as they immediately dissolve into thin air unable to keep their form.

He feels as though someone reached inside of him and clenched their fist tight around his stomach, and the taste of blood floods his mouth.

Alex winces and Jenna yells loud and grabs the pistol from her hip.

She points and shoots at the hellhound a bullet connected to a long metal chain, hitting it right in the shoulder, the bullet immediately flares out and latches on tight.

She pushes a button alongside the pistol and the long chain pulls taught and drags her across towards the beast.

Alex takes a step towards where Andro disappears, and then realizes that there are four more hellhounds incoming.

“Three!” Jenna yells victoriously before she skids to a stop right beside him. “More? What could he  _possibly_ have that they want?”

Alex shrugs and shakes his hands out pushing hard through the pain that flares up his leg as he gets ready to run.

Alex flips the sai in his grip, holding the blade pressed against the inside of his forearm.

He takes a deep breath and Jenna does the same, before they’re running forward.

Jenna slides between the first two and Alex flips the sai stabbing it right through the hellhounds head through its chin.

As it falls to its knees, Alex reaches up and pulls himself up to its shoulder, pushing off as the beast falls to ashes to hook his knee over the next beast, reaching towards one of the rubber bracelets wrapped around his wrist. He pulls it apart and a thin silver chain spools from within, shiny and deadly.

He wraps it around the hellhound’s neck and drops down its back twisting his hands and tugging with all of his weight.

The beast dies and Alex falls to the floor throwing the useless rubber bands away.

He hears the sound of breaking glass, and a shotgun going off twice before the dying screech of a beast.

He turns to find Kyle frozen as though he's in shock, shotgun smoking in front of him.

“Four,” Jenna says sounding out of breath as she reaches Alex and starts to drag him towards Kyle.

“Ditto,” Alex says slowly.

The fight may be over, but Alex has a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach that he doesn't think has to do only with the fact that Andro still hadn't reappeared.

Kyle had lowered the gun and was looking between the two of them with wide eyes.

“That was, um-” he clears his throat and struggles to come up with a word.

“Different?” Alex says stepping over the broken glass and into the house.

“Weird as fuck?” Jenna says following behind him.

“-hot,” Kyle blurts out sounding like his mouth is dry and then promptly goes red.

Alex tilts his head and looks at Kyle speculatively while Jenna snorts and turns towards the living room only to stop and reach out to grab Alex.

“Please tell me that I'm hallucinating and that is  _not_ a magical time bomb.”

Alex turns to see and starts cursing when he sees the countdown.

“Kyle, go!” he says reaching out and pushing him back towards the door.

“You get the trap,” he tells Jenna using the hold she has on him and pushing her towards the safe.

She goes giving him a brief look as he turns and heads up the stairs.

Alex grabs his leather jacket, specially modified to hold several things within the lining and spends precious few seconds searching for a box before remembering that he'd stuffed it beneath his pillow.

He turns around and Andro is standing right behind him.

They breathe right in his face exuding disapproval and Alex gives them a smile, feeling anticipation flood through his veins.

He stuffs the box into his jacket pocket and takes a step forward, bowing a little and closing his eyes.

Andro huffs out another breath, but Alex feels them lean forward to press their forehead to Alex's.

They inhale together and their pulse syncs, and then Alex’s subconscious recognizes that part of Andro that belongs to him, and that’s all it takes for them to form the connection.

Andro dispels into smoke that surrounds Alex, spreading across his skin, and eyes, and mouth and then it sinks into him, twining them close together.

Alex inhales sharply as everything becomes louder and more intense, as all of the magic surrounding him suddenly comes into sharp focus, lighting up in strands of glowing light that are bright like the sun in the back of his mind in various colors. It would be easy to get lost in the overwhelming  _otherness_ of it all, but Alex fights against the instinct.

Alex opens his eyes and focuses on the now and immediate.

He can  _feel_ Michael calling for them, low and insistent as though he’s doing it in the privacy of his mind, and he can sense the magical bomb downstairs, ticking, ten, nine, eight, seven-

He can feel that Kyle and Jenna have not made it far away enough.

Alex blinks and he’s outside, Kyle and Jenna run past him, before they realize it and both of them skid to a stop, tumbling back towards him.

They both grab on to him as the bomb goes off.

Alex lifts a hand in the air and thinks  _protect_ remembering Kyle, six years old pushing Alex on the swings and Jenna, two nights ago laughing as they shared a bottle of tequila on top of the hood of her cop car. As the magic responds to him immediately, Alex feels the euphoric rush that always comes with magic, but  _more_ because it’s so  _easy_.

He feels Kyle tugging Jenna close and pressing up against Alex’s back, an arm around his hips trying to drag him down.

The barrier surrounds them like a dome, and Alex shuts his eyes tight and concentrates on keeping it together while the debris and smoke cloud and ashes and ripples of a powerful curse wash over them.

Once the sickly purple green sparks of the curse die out, Andro's strength fails them.

Alex feels how their presence shrinks within his mind, curling like an exhausted shadow, right in what feels like the middle of his soul.

Alex drops to his knees and gasps as a shudder goes through him.

“Fuck,” Jenna is saying as the multiple car alarms penetrate through Alex's subconscious. “We don’t have time to deal with this. Can you carry him?”

Alex feels hands grabbing him instead of an answer and then he's being swung over Kyle's shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

Kyle grunts with the effort, as he begins to walk, presumably following Jenna. “You're heavier than you look, Manes.”

Alex would very much like to say something to that but his brain feels like it's sloshing around his head and all he can concentrate on is the red lettering of the tag of Kyle's jeans.

In what feels like no time and too much time, Kyle moves him, too fast and pushes him to stand against a flat surface.

Alex feels the world tilt, and he gags and leans over and throws up.

Kyle makes a distressed noise in the back of his throat, but holds on to him so that he doesn’t drop face first into his own vomit.

Jenna curses, “For fuck’s sake, you had to do Black Level Magic,  _now_ of all times?”

“Pocket,” Alex gasps, and starts patting himself, trying to get to the left pocket of his jacket.

“Thank fuck you’re always prepared,” Jenna says relief coloring her tone as she pushes his hands away before reaching into the pocket herself and tugging out a silver vial.

She uncaps it one handed with her thumb while pushing Alex’s head back so that he’s leaning against Kyle’s shoulder and tips the vial into his mouth.

The potion is vile, but Alex swallows it down, gagging the whole time, but he knows it’s worth it for the immediate effect that it has.

He pushes away from Kyle and leans back against the wall trying to catch his breath, blinking his eyes to clear the spots from his vision. “That was too fucking close,” he says voice hoarse.

Jenna starts laughing a little hysterically, and she leans against Kyle, closing her eyes briefly before she opens them again pushing away.

“I have to go back,” she says. “My car was in the driveway.”

“Mine too,” Kyle says. “Do the authorities know about magic and witches?”

“Need to know basis, only,” Jenna says. “A bomb is going to be a bitch to explain away, but it’s doable. You gonna be okay?”

Alex looks at her and nods his head, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and making a face. “I’m gonna be fine. I just have to do something now rather than later.”

“What?” Kyle asks. “You’re not going to stay?”

“No one knows I’m staying here,” Alex says. “Or they didn’t. And there are too many things to prepare for before the night of the full moon for both Jenna and I to be caught up in this investigation.”

“The full moon is tomorrow night,” Kyle says blankly.

“Exactly,” Alex responds and pushes away from the wall of the house Jenna had lead the to.

He reaches inside of his jacket into the inside pocket and pulls out a medallion on a long silver chain, the Valenti Family Talisman, that Jim had placed into his hands ten years ago.

“This is yours,” he tells Kyle while handing the talisman to Jenna. “You can’t touch it unless you’re one hundred percent sure this is what you want. My father was wrong. It’s not the knowledge that's a target, but touching that will for sure make you one.”

Jenna pockets the talisman, and Kyle just nods seriously at Alex.

“Where are you gonna go?” he asks as Jenna turns towards where the smoke is rising from what remains of her house.

Alex watches her for a second and swallows down on the apology he wants to make before turning back to Kyle.

“You’re not the only person I’ve been avoiding since coming back,” Alex says and stuffs his hands into his pockets as he starts walking in the general direction of the Wild Pony.

 

**.liz.**

Liz takes a sip of her coffee, looks up as Isobel's voice gets loud, talking over Max, notes that ten minutes have passed since the last time she checked the time at 1255 PM, and looks back to Michael who pushes his empty plate away and downs the glass of water quickly.

Liz puts her coffee cup down and watches him intently.

Michael raises an eyebrow at her before he’s raising his hand and crooking his fingers towards her coffee cup.

The cup slides across the space and into his hand, and he lifts it to his mouth and takes a sip before he makes a face.

“Too sweet,” he complains.

Liz makes a face back at him. “No one told you to take it.”

Michael just shrugs and takes another sip.

“How’d you do that, anyway?” she asks leaning forward. “Is it like a special power you have? Like Max can bring people back from the dead and you can move things with your mind?”

Michael taps his finger against the rim of the coffee cup before he drinks down the rest of it and sets the empty cup back down on the table.

“No,” he says simply, and Liz raises an eyebrow at him.

“Anyone can do the spell Max did, to varying success,” he gives her a look as though to say that she’s lucky. “But yes, moving things with my mind as you say is my specialty. Max and Isobel each have their own.”

The look on his face says that he won’t talk about that.

Liz just acknowledges that with a nod and thinks of another question to ask. “Does all magic have consequences like a demon coming after you?”

Michael shakes his head. “It depends on the strength of the spell.”

He leans forward towards her, holding his hands out in front of him.

“Magic isn’t exactly what you’re thinking it. You can’t create something out of nothing,” he says moving his hands around. “And just like that, you can’t expect the very fabric of reality to bend to your whim and not expect something to happen.”

Liz furrows her brow at him opening her mouth, but he continues to speak.

“It’s like Murphy’s Law. Everything that can go wrong will most likely go wrong, but you got what you wanted out of it. So magic is really all about whether or not you’re willing to accept the consequences for your actions given that you got what you wanted.”

Liz sits back in her seat,”Okay, so something, like you taking my coffee cup?”

“No cost at all,” Michael says as he yawns and then blinks at her accusingly. “I’ve had a long night.”

Liz eyes the cut on his eyebrow, the bruises on his face and neck, and how there are red lines cut into the palm of his hand, but she doesn’t say anything about it.

Max and Isobel’s argument escalates, and Michael just rolls his eyes as Liz looks worriedly towards the closed door of Max’s bedroom.

“Don’t worry,” Michael says. “She’s getting louder which means the argument is almost ov-”

Michael pitches forward suddenly, gasping in pain as he wraps his arms around his stomach and rests his head against the table.

“Michael!” she yells out getting up to move to his side at the same time that Isobel and Max are running out of the room.

Isobel gets to Michael first, pulling him back, and making him look at her. He blinks up dazedly at the ceiling and there is blood staining the corners of his mouth.

Liz is about to ask if this is what they mean by the consequences of magic, when Michael gasps out. “Andro.”

Isobel makes rude noise in the back of her throat and starts talking as though they were right in the middle of this argument and had just hit pause, “I warned you the night you decided to give into whatever crap Manes had poured into your veins and you decided not to listen to me and now one of his sons-”

“Andro has  _nothing_ to do with what Manes did to me,” Michael says pulling away from her to glare.

“Manes?” Liz says furrowing her brow. “As in Alex’s family Manes?”

Michael’s glare intensifies and he leans back in his seat but doesn’t say anything else.

Isobel rolls her eyes.

“Isobel,” Max says stepping forward and giving Liz an apologetic look. “You can’t just-”

“The Manes are one of the oldest family of Witch Hunters,” Isobel says catching Liz’s eyes and holding the stare, looking at her seriously. “They are in charge of the Facility here in Roswell. Manes has been trying to get Michael into his fancy torture chamber of an interrogation room for the last ten years since Alex disappeared without a trace, and now right when he comes back Maria is having Premonitions of the Hound lurking in his shadow and you think it’s what? A coincidence?”

She looks down at Michael at last of it, and Michael glares up at her.

“Wait,” Liz says blinking rapidly and looking at Max who is looking right back at her. “Maria?”

Max opens his mouth to speak, but Isobel starts speaking again.

“Where is Andro anyway? And what are they doing that you’re in pain?”

Michael purses his mouth and looks away.

Isobel scoffs, “Probably lurking in Alex Manes’ fucking shadow while he gets into trouble.”

“I don’t know what you want from me Iz,” Michael says sighing and slumping even lower in his seat. “It’s not like I can control them. Andro does what they want.”

“And don’t you think that’s a little weird? Familiars are supposed to obey you-”

Michael scoffs cutting her off with a motion of his hand. “Please, you don’t know the first thing about familiars.”

“Neither do you,” Max points out as though he can’t help himself.

Michael rolls his eyes.

“All I’m saying,” Michael says. “Is that you’re wrong. Andro isn’t the Hound. They can’t be.”

“ _What_ exactly is the Hound?” Liz asks, more to herself than to anyone else.

“It is said to be the first ever familiar,” Max answers her. “The gift the angel of death, Azrael gave her love Samael, a piece of her soul to keep him protected.”

“What that lovely story doesn’t say is that both Azrael and Samael were two of the first angels to fall after Lucifer because they loved each other too much to let go,” Isobel says a little pointedly.

Which makes Liz furrow her brow in confusion, and look at Michael with narrowed eyes.

“Which is why it can't be Andro,” Michael says looking up at the ceiling. “They're mine. Alex had nothing to do with them either.”

“Are you sure about that?” Isobel asks leaning over him to catch his eyes. “Did you check?”

Michael doesn’t answer, which Liz thinks is a loud enough answer in and of itself.

“I would know, okay?” he says and pushes his chair back, getting up quickly and making both Isobel and Max jump back. “You’re blowing this all completely out of proporti-”

Michael inhales sharply and sways almost like he’s going to faint, before he’s dropping back down to his seat like a puppet with its strings cut off.

There is a low booming sound like a bomb going off somewhere not too far away that has both Max and Liz looking out of the window while Isobel leans over Michael, tipping his head back.

Liz hears the far away sound of multiple car alarms going off. “Was that-?” she starts, but Isobel cuts her off.

“What the fuck Michael?” Isobel says. “You’re not some second rate hack with  _some_ witch blood running through your veins. Why are you-?”

“Battery,” is Michael’s nonsensical response, but Isobel seems to understand it well enough to start cursing.

“You’re a fucking idiot,” she says voice losing all of it’s antagonism.

Michael coughs and more blood stains the corner of his mouth. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

“Let’s get you cleaned up,” Isobel says helping him up and herding him towards the bathroom talking in a low soothing voice.

Liz watches them go with narrowed eyes and then looks at Max raising an eyebrow.

Max raises his hands. “It’s not my job to tell you anything about your friends. You want to know what’s going on there you’re gonna have to ask them.”

Liz just sighs and drops back down in her seat.

Max takes Michael’s vacated chair and leans his elbows on the table watching her.

“What about you?” she asks instead. Something else she's been wanting to ask since he mentioned it. “How many black marks do you need to lose your job?”

Max licks his lips and stays silent for a few minutes before he says, “Three.”

“What is a black mark exactly?”

“To do magic you need a license, if you're caught doing magic you're not licensed or sanctioned to do, you get a black mark.”

“What did you do?” Liz asks curiously.

Max once again stares at her in silence.

Liz looks at him and tries to think of the worst thing that she can imagine Max Evans doing.

She doesn't come close.

“We all have the same birthday,” Max says signaling towards where she can faintly hear Isobel talking to Michael. “And every year one of us choses something to do, and that year Michael chose to go camping. My special power is that I can control lightning, but I didn’t know that then. We knew we were witches, but we didn’t know we had specialties until that night.”

Max is quiet for a moment, and Liz licks her lips, opening her mouth to prod him along when Max looks away from her, out of the window.

“Some lowlife, tried to kidnap Isobel when she’d gone out to use the bathroom. She reached out for us with her mind, and we blinked and there we were with her. Michael pushed him back, harder than he thought he could, and I summoned lighting and struck him down. He died.

“Michael was going to take the blame, but I couldn’t let him do that, not when they’d just put him back in the system and probably make him leave Roswell. So when the Witch Hunters came, I told them it was self defense.”

Liz licks her lips and watches the side of Max’s face as he continues to look outside of the window.

“And the second black mark?” she asks as gently as possible.

Max looks back at her and hesitates for a second.

“It turns out,” Isobel says making Liz jump and turn to look at her. “That I need to be connected to three different people in order to be stable. We didn’t figure that out until senior year.”

Michael walks in from behind Isobel and leans against Max's desk, picking up the book he had earlier.

“Long story short,” Isobel continues leaning against the couch. “Some creep was inside my head. Trying to get him out cost someone their life, and I found that unacceptable. I brought someone back to life and unleashed a demon. Max took the blame for me. Because I already have three black marks, one more and it’s witch prison for me.”

“Witch prison?” Liz asks looking from Isobel to Max and furrowing her brow at the look on his face.

“Yeah,” Michael is the one to answer, closing the book and setting it back down on the desk. “Cozy little cells, lining the cave walls of the underground dungeon at the Facility, big enough for one person to move around, and they offer all of the amenities, food and excellent health care for when they torture you to the point of almost death.”

Liz gives Michael a look, and Michael shrugs. “They give you a tour of the Facility when you apply for your license. And I'm pretty sure Manes knew about me and Alex by that point, but had no proof. He stressed a lot of points that stayed with me.”

All the little hints throughout the conversation suddenly click together in Liz’s head, and she feels a little dumb for not figuring it out sooner.

“Wait, you and Alex?”

Michael furrows his brow and her like he’s confused, before Isobel snaps her fingers in the air.

“That’s right, you were already gone by the time Michael had his Great Breakdown over Alex disappearing.”

Michael makes a low disbelieving noise at the back of his throat, and Isobel looks away as though she said something that she shouldn’t have.

Max gives her the same confused look she gives him.

“The point,” Michael says cutting through the awkward silence that falls between them. “Is that no witch ever comes out of there, at least not alive.”

“Witch Hunters kill witches?” Liz asks and knows that it sounds like a stupid question, but she’d thought that they called themselves Witch Hunters because they were hunters that were also witches, not that they actually hunted witches.

Michael scoffs and pushes off the desk to head to the kitchen.

Isobel stands right behind Max who looks up at her as she rests her arm along the back of his chair.

“Witch Hunters are the bane of our existence. They make the laws. They enforce them. They decide whether we broke them. They decide the punishment. And more often than not, all of these decisions are made in the heat of the moment.”

“That’s not fair,” Max is the one to say, while Michael shuts the fridge door a little too hard, a glass bottle making a loud thudding sound as he sets it on the counter. “You can’t say that all witches are innocent-”

Isobel rolls her eyes, while Michael sets the bottle back down after twisting the cap angrily.

“You can’t say that all witches killed by Witch Hunters are guilty,” Michael says, tossing the cap in an arc that is way off but still manages to land in the garbage can. “Just like you can’t say that everyone arrested in a cell in your precinct right now is actually guilty and not there because of some deputy asshole on duty who saw a brown man walking on the street and decided he was a danger to the town.”

Max sighs as though he’s had this conversation plenty of times before.

It makes Liz bite her lip down on a smile, that Max who probably doesn’t agree with the way things are done, but can’t do much without risking his job, probably has this conversation with Michael who had once gotten arrested for throwing eggs on a cop car during Halloween, once a week.

“We’re talking about Witch Hunters,” he says throwing Michael a look. “Not cops.“

“One and the same if you ask me,” Michael drawls and takes a swig from the beer bottle.

Isobel scoffs, “You are such a hypocrite.”

Michael raises an eyebrow in her direction, and Isobel gives him a look back.

Michael just shrugs and takes another mouthful of beer and Isobel’s eyes narrow.

“How many witches has Alex killed?”

Michael stops moving, and Liz feels like her heart also stalls in her chest for a second at the words.

“He is a Witch Hunter, trained by the best, hunting all over Europe. How many of those kills under his name belong to witches and not just lesser demons? Or did you forget to ask him that while you were giving him the tour of your Airstream last night?”

Michael gives her a mocking smirk setting the bottle down on the counter hard enough that Liz hears it crack.

“No, I didn't,” he says and gives her a mock apologetic look. “Sorry, it must've slipped my mind somewhere between fighting the demon and passing out.”

“What?!” Isobel exclaims moving away from Max and taking steps towards Michael. “You told me you were in a fight! You never said it was with a demon!”

“You never asked,” Michael says shrugging and looking away, drinking the rest of the beer in two long swallows.

“Never asked-” Isobel starts off indignant before Max's question stops her short.

“Was it the demon that marked Liz?”

Michael throws his bottle away and it shatters as it lands in the mostly empty garbage, but doesn't answer.

Liz can faintly hear Max asking him something else, but it almost sounds like it's coming from far away.

She puts her hand over the mark on her arm and swears she feels it pulse like it has its own heartbeat.

It was easy to pretend that last night didn't happen. Easy to pretend that the demon wasn't terrifying when Max's house is so brightly lit and warm and soothing.

“It did something to me last night,” Liz says slowly, feeling a chill sleeping through her as she remembers the feeling as it wrapped itself around her in inky black wispy tendrils that felt like ice pressing against her skin, sinking deep into her bones making her feel like she'll never be warm again. "Tried to get inside of me it felt, but then it just went away. I don't know why."

She jumps when she feels something settling along her shoulders, and looks to see Max draping the Afghan that had been on the couch over her shoulders.

Liz wraps it around herself and only realizes then that she's shivering.

"It found a better candidate for possession," Michael says sounding terrifyingly blank for someone whose emotions are always on his sleeve.

Liz looks over to see him staring at her with a faraway look on his face.

Isobel snaps her fingers in his face and he turns to glare at her.

"This candidate? Was it you, or was it Alex? And if it is him, did he know that the demon was after him when he went to you?"

Michael doesn't answer. 

Isobel inhales deeply, "I'm going to rip his lungs out."

"No," Michael snaps. "He needed help and I could more than handle it."

He motions to himself as though to say that he's there standing in front of them, but even Liz can tell that he looks ready to pass out.

Isobel makes a scoffing noise.

Michael glares at her. "It was either help him get what he needed to make the trap or let him kill the demon. Which would you have preferred?"

He directs the question to Max, who doesn't reply.

Isobel rolls her eyes, but doesn't say anything either as she looks to Max and then to Liz.

"What happens if you kill the demon?" Liz asks looking up at Max. "Wouldn't killing it be better than putting it in a trap?"

Max looks at her, and then sighs, and Liz gets a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach.

"Killing the demon breaks the spell that brought it over."

"Oh," Liz says slowly, pressing a hand to her chest.

"But that's not going to happen," Max says dropping so that he's kneeling in front of her. "I won't let it."

Liz looks into Max's eyes, and feels the chill inside of her dissipate, feeling warmth spread through her like a wave at the care and protection shining in his eyes.

Isobel gags loud and obvious, "Come on Michael before you get infected with Dumb Ass Bitch Disease. Whoops too late!"

She laughs and Liz turns to see Michael pushing her towards the living room area. He yawns as he follows her and she grabs his hand and tugs him towards Max's bedroom.

Liz looks back to Max who is watching Michael and Isobel go with a soft smile on his face.

Liz licks her lips, ignoring the way her heart seems to be fluttering and clears her throat to get his attention.

"I should go," she says. "My father is probably worried sick by now. I should let him know that everything is okay."

Max nods his head and stands up, offering her a hand to help her get up, which she doesn't really need, but appreciates.

She pulls the Afghan from her shoulders and gives it to him.

He puts it away while she gathers her things from the guest room and meets him at the door.

Max follows her out, and she gives him a smile. "You don't have to walk me to my car."

Max smiles sheepishly. "I want to."

Liz stops and turns to him shaking her head. "You're trying too hard."

Max furrows her brow at her.

"Just ask me out for drinks, I'll say yes."

A flush works its way across Max's cheeks, but he still smiles bright and says, "Wanna go out for drinks tonight?"

Liz makes a noise with her mouth and gives him a mock apologetic look. "Oh, sorry. I can't."

Max laughs, throwing his head back and Liz grins back at him.

He looks at her with bright eyes and Liz's smile widens.

"Once this whole demon thing is over though," she says. "I'll be more than happy to join you at the Wild Pony for drinks."

Max nods his head. "I'll be waiting."

Liz exhales and just looks at him, and Max moves in a bit closer, reaching out to gently cup her shoulders in his hands, looking serious. "You don't have to worry about your father. I put a protection circle around the diner before I brought you here.”

Liz feels her heart stutter in her chest.

“Thanks,” she says giving him a smile. “That makes me feel a lot better.”

Max just nods his head, not looking away from her.

Liz inhales deeply and takes a step back. Max’s hands fall to his sides as she turns walking towards her car.

She walks several steps before she turns back around. “Goodbye,” she says because she hasn’t.

“I’ll see you around,” Max responds stuffing his hands in his pockets.

Liz nods her head and turns back towards her car.

"Also, I don't think you're a bad person," Liz says turning around one more time to see that Max  _still_ hasn't moved. "I think you're just a person put in extraordinary situations and you did the best that you could, but that doesn't make you bad. In fact, doing this all to protect your siblings makes you the best person, in my opinion."

Max smiles at her again, soft and gentle and Liz almost stumbles in her haste to turn back around and get in her car.

What she needs is someone to talk to about Max Evans and everything that he told her. She would like to talk to her father since it’s been too long since they’ve sat down and had a conversation, but there are things that she wants to talk about that she can’t tell him.

But she knows exactly where to find one of the two people who she can talk to about this.

She sneaks one more look at Max who is leaning against one of the pillars of his balcony watching her and then turns on her car.

She puts the car in drive and heads to the Wild Pony.

 

**.maria.**

Maria sets the dried glass next to the others on the shelf and looks at the pouch, poking it with her finger and making the lilac powder poof into the air.

She bites down on the smile that threatens to pull at her lips.

No, she's not going to think its charming.

She turns around and grabs another one of the wet glasses on the tray and starts to dry it.

Isobel Evans  _cannot_ be getting under Maria’s skin. Not again. Not after what happened during their senior year.

Maria is not the naive girl too blinded by a bright pink smile and flashy emerald green sparks to see what was actually happening.

She turns towards the shelf, reaching up to put the glass away and darts a look at the clock.

The seconds hand passes the twelve officially making it 1 PM.

Maria looks to the shelf to put the glass down and then she gasps, letting go of the glass to reach forward to keep her balance as her head feels suddenly heavy, and she sways.

The glass shatters on the floor, and Maria is lost, sinking, drowning, falling, spinning.

And then she stops.

She inhales deeply, the air fills her lungs like molasses and then she opens her eyes.

Everything is still around her.

A noise in the air caught on a second loop, a gasp, a scream, a yell, a buzzing in her ears, a knife slicing through flesh.

A scent like wind blowing through hot sand, like blood, like rotting and decomposing evil things, like magic and ozone, like death.

Maria ignores the sound and the smell and concentrates on what she can see, trying to take everything in before it disappears like smoke.

There's Kyle standing back to back with Cameron, a bat wrapped in silver barbed wire in his hands, the Valenti Family Talisman hanging from around his neck, dressed up like a Witch Hunter, eyes narrowed in determination. Cameron is dressed identically with her hair braided back tightly, two katana in her hands, covered in black demonic essence, a smirk tugging against the corners of her mouth.

They're completely surrounded by lesser demons, creatures made entirely of demon essence and whatever bit of nature it had landed on.

Further away from them, at the edges of the lesser demon swarm, is Guerin, falling to his knees, hand to his chest, blood staining the corners of his mouth, a black blur behind him.

Directly opposite of him, in the middle of a fight with several hellhounds, standing beside Isobel is Alex, staring at Guerin with wide black eyes, lips parted, dark thick swirls of ribbons of smoke surrounding him.

Isobel is yelling, hands pressed either side of her head, fingers clenched in her hair.

Maria sees herself, a blur looking back at Isobel, and sees herself again, another blur, in process of dropping to her knees besides Max, who is on the floor, lying in an awkward angle, blood staining the corners of his mouth and beneath his nose and down his ear lobes to his jaw.

Last is Liz, no,  _Rosa_ , no, Liz.

Liz, mouth open in an angry yell, sparks of sapphire blue and blood red swirling around her like a tornado, blending to purple around where her hand is wrapped around a long dagger that she’s stabbing into the demon looming over them, the wispy smoke of its essence starting to get sucked into the dagger.

Maria drops into her body hard, stumbling backwards into the bar and rattling the tray of glasses.

She searches in a half blind daze for her sketchbook and drops to the floor with it once it's in her hands.

Maria sketches in a daze, putting as much detail as she can remember to the picture before tearing it out and sending it fluttering into the air before she starts on the other one.

Time loses all meaning and by the time she feels the adrenaline start to flag, her fingers feel cramped, and her hands are completely smudged in grey.

She's breathing hard and her mouth feels dry, but the restless feeling that had been buzzing through her for days is finally gone.

She looks at the last sketch.

It's Alex, and not. His face up close, brow furrowed, eyes narrowed and black, completely covering the sclera, wisps of black smoke wafting from the corners, mouth pulled back into a snarl, teeth too sharp to be human.

She hears a noise, like leather creaking and looks up and into Alex's warm brown eyes that she hasn't seen in person in ten years.

He's crouched in front of her and holding a glass full of cold water.

Maria takes it without a word and swallows it down in too fast gulps that feel like they get stuck in her throat and gives her a headache.

She coughs a little, holding the glass out,  and Alex serves her more water from the pitcher he sets right back on the floor next to him.

Maria takes slower sips of this glass and leans back on her heels studying Alex.

His hair is a mess some parts clumped together in places with sweat and dirt and blood. There's a still bleeding cut along his hairline and huge bruise along one side of his face that looks incredibly tender, and that's only what she can see. His clothes are covered in dirt and soot from hellhound kills probably. The white shirt is familiar in a way that it has no right to be, but all of Guerin's white cotton shirts are stretched out and faded to holes in places around the collar from the way that he pulls them off.

She looks back up when Alex moves, lowering the glass as he touches the cut on his forehead as though he just noticed it.

"Go get the first aid kit," she says, picking her glass back up to drink more water when her voice comes out hoarse.

Alex licks his lips, and holds her stare for a beat.

Maria rolls her eyes, "Go."

Alex goes, and Maria starts to collect the sketches that she'd thrown on the floor.

She gathers them all, and stacks them together without really looking at them.

Maria's specialty is teleportation. She has never been caught in a fight between any kind of demonic creature because she can escape to safety in the blink of an eye.

She has a feeling that there will be no way to avoid this fight. Especially with Liz getting involved.

She closes the sketchbook on the stack of sketches and gets up. Her knees complain and protest and she stumbles little against the bar as she sets the sketchbook down.

She’s washing her hands when Alex comes back with the first aid kit and sets it down on the bar, staying on the other side.

"Welcome back," she says caustically and hears Alex sigh. "I heard a rumor you were in Roswell, but it seems like you're too busy getting into fights and making sure that  _Guerin_ is still in the same condition you left him in, to come and visit the best friend that you abandoned without a word."

"You  _know_ it wasn't my choice to leave," he says as Maria walks around the bar so she won't have to stretch to help him with his wound.

"But it was your choice to stay away," she says and pulls the first aid kit out of his hands and across the bar, opening it easily.

"Sit down," she says when he just keeps watching her.

Alex sits and sighs.

There is silence for a few seconds, and Maria waits as she pulls the gauze and the hydrogen peroxide out.

She starts counting down in her head, mouthing along, three, two, on-

"I'm sorry," Alex blurts out. "I would've come to see you first thing but I-"

"You were avoiding my mother," she says turning to him and shaking her head when she sees the guilty look on his face.

"You're not exactly subtle, and she's mentioned how many times she's tried to get you to come back."

Alex sighs as Maria dabs some gauze with hydrogen peroxide and starts to clean the cut on his forehead.

"I'm just not ready to have the conversation she wants to have with me."

"You don't have to worry about that," Maria says and swallows hard, and folds the gauze and keeps dabbing gently at the cut.

"Why not?" He asks voice slow and careful.

Maria smiles gently at him in reassurance, "She's not dead. She's just losing her mind."

Alex grabs her hand and lowers it away from his face. He rubs his thumb across the back of her hand, and she inhales deeply before she settles herself back in the stool across from him and squeezes his hand in hers.

"What happened?" He asks softly.

"She's been in the Angel Heart Care Facility just outside of town for the last couple of weeks," Maria says on a sigh, leaning one elbow on the bar to lean her chin on her hand. "The Council Doctors say that she's been fighting off the effects of a pretty potent curse for at least a few years, and she's just succumbing to it now, and there's nothing that they can do but make her comfortable while it does what it's supposed to do."

"And they can't find a cure?" He asks voice rough and low.

"It's a parasite," she says laughing humorlessly. "And there's no way to extract it without killing her."

Alex uses the hold he has on her hand to pull her in close.

She goes willingly, leaning heavily against him, and putting her head on his shoulder.

He wraps her up in his arms and Maria feels like all of the weight is off her shoulders as he holds her tight.

Alex's hugs were always her favorite. He always did it too tight and for too long as though it was the only hug he was ever going to get.

"I'm so sorry," he says leaning his head against hers. "I wish that I had been here. You shouldn't have had to go through that alone. You should've called me."

"It's okay," she says, patting one hand against his chest. "You're here now that's all that matters."

Alex freezes, and Maria pulls back immediately, fingers tangling into the fabric of his leather jacket.

"Don't tell me you're going to leave again!" She demands.

Alex gives her a helpless look. "Roswell isn't my home anymore. I have a job and a life that I left behind. I can't just-"

"What about Guerin?" Maria asks and is surprised at the way that Alex closes down.

He straightens up, squaring his shoulders and his eyes turned dark, losing all of the warmth he just had.

"Michael has no bearing on my decision to stay or go."

The words are calculated and precise, and Maria gets the feeling that she's not the person that he prepared them for.

Maria pulls back a little bit more and really  _looks_ at him.

His aura is different, inky black and purple spiderwebbed in silver spreading from the center out, taking over the soft amber shot through with gold lichtenberg figures.

When she closes her eyes and tries to concentrate on if he  _feels_ any different, her eyes snap open immediately when she feels the familiar presence of Andro curled intimately in the center of Alex's soul.

Alex is still looking at her with those cold, closed off eyes, but there is a hint of wariness in his face.

“ _How_?" She asks feeling a little bit confused, but also like something is starting to make sense. "It's not possible. Not unless-"

"Stop!" Alex snaps, but it's too late.

"Holy shit," Maria gasps sitting back in the stool.

"Don't-" Alex starts, turning to look at her seriously, but there is no  _way_ that she's not going to say something.

"Just like in the stories," she says, and Alex's shoulders relax minutely. "Azrael and Samael and their forbidden love that dragged them to hell and then forced them apart. And the Hound, the First Familiar, a piece of Azrael's soul to protect Samael when they were torn apart."

Alex sighs and drops his head on top of the bar, wincing when he knocks against the tender cut on his forehead.

"You don't even know the half of it."

Maria looks at him, at how tired he seems, and gets up.

She slides her hand across his back as she walks back to the other side of the bar.

She makes sure that there is enough water from earlier in the electric kettle before she flicks it on and heads to the shelf where she keeps the ingredients for potions and salves and teas.

She reaches for the chamomile and lavender mixture and looks over that the pouch.

She purses her mouth and turns away from the shelf.

Alex still has his head on the bar.

She puts the jar down beside the kettle and starts to speak.

“Guerin went missing for two days at the same time that you did. Isobel went frantic. She has a psychic bond with her brothers, did you know that?”

She looks over at him and sees that he’s watching her, elbow propped on the bar, leaning his head in his hand.

He shakes his head, and she turns to get a mug from another shelf.

“Well, it turns out that he was in Germany, of all places, and couldn’t get back until he built his strength back up. A jump like that combined with whatever happened to his hand left him weak for a bit.”

She darts a look at Alex to see that he’s sitting up watching her intently.

“Mom said that it should’ve left him weak for longer, but Guerin’s always been strong, especially when it comes to magic.”

Alex bites down on his lip and looks away, and Maria knows that he knows something, but now is not the time to push about it.

She walks over to the kettle and sets the mug beside the jar.

“It took two more days for him to get away from the collective arms of the Evanses, and then he was looking everywhere for you, but no one knew anything. I didn’t even know what had happened until I got that first vision of you in London. I asked mom about it and she told me the truth, but that we couldn’t let anyone know. Your father found out obviously, somehow, since I also got the vision of him finding you in Helsinki, but she made sure to tell me that, Guerin, especially couldn’t know what happened to you.”

Alex sighs and drops his head back down on top of the bar, shoulders barely moving when he winces again.

“I don’t think he ever really believed that you were dead, but weeks and weeks and weeks of him just searching and nothing. He spiraled. He got thrown in the drunk tank more times than I can count. He was constantly doing too strong magic and burning out. It all came to a head with a confrontation against your father. No one knows what he told Guerin, but he was different for while. I got really scared that he wasn’t going to make it pass the year.”

Alex still hasn’t lifted his head from the bar, but he’s almost too still.

Maria walks over to him, and places a hand on the back of his head. “Andro saved his life,” she says and feels how he jumps and then stills beneath her hand.

Alex sighs, “They saved my life too.”

“Familiars are tricky things to get right, and one as independent and strong as Andro shouldn’t have been possible, unless he had help.”

Alex sighs again and moves.

Maria lets her hand fall to the bar.

“You’re right,” he says as he straightens up. “He didn’t do it by himself. I just didn’t know what was happening to me that night.”

“That’s impossible, Alex, you get that right?” She says and he gives her a look like he can’t believe that she thinks he doesn’t know.

"You were in Europe, there's no way-"

"I was in Germany when it happened," he says, but doesn't look at her.

Maria furrows her brow, and she can feel the edge of the answer on the tip of her tongue, but the kettle goes off, making that high pitched whine that knocks it out of place.

She sighs frustrated but willing to wait for the answer since they have more important things to worry about.

She darts a look at her sketchbook and then turns and starts to make his cup of tea.

"The Facility in Munich is where I've been living the last five years," Alex says. "But it was the second Facility that I was sent to. It was there where it happened."

Maria turns around with the steaming mug and places it right in front of him.

"What's so special about Germany?"

Alex licks his lips, reaching for the mug and cupping his hands around it. "I think that I need to have that conversation with Michael before I have it with you."

Maria gives him a serious look.

"If you're planning on leaving, you should leave Guerin alone."

Alex licks his lips, "Don't you think I know that?"

"Then what are you-"

"I didn't do it on purpose," he says defensively. "I was doing my job and he was there at the diner, and then I needed help to make the trap-"

"So you already have it, good," she says interrupting him and sighing before crossing one item off her growing mental list. "You have to give it to Liz."

"Give what to me?"

Maria looks up in surprise to see Liz at the entrance to the bar, the door closing shut silently behind her.

She has a determined look on her face, but Maria feels a sense of betrayal that confuses her for a second.

"What's wro-?" She starts to ask, but Liz starts to speak, walking closer agitatedly with each word.

"Max Evans brought me back to life and now there is a demon coming after me which we can't kill or else I die, again.”

Maria freezes, but doesn’t look away as Liz stands right next to Alex, eyes darting between the two of them, searching. 

“But the worst thing that I found out today is that my two best friends were lying to me the whole time they knew me."

Maria inhales deeply and then looks at Alex who is raising an eyebrow at her.

She raises an eyebrow back because this is Witch Hunter territory, but he just inclines his head, slightly and lifts the mug to his face.

“Sit down, Liz,” Maria says looking away from Alex. “We should talk.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading !!! <3


	3. i wish that i did not know where all broken lovers go

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i want to apologize for how long this chapter took to post, but if you follow me on tumblr you already know i get distracted EASILY, but thank you for reading!! and hopefully it's worth the wait???

******.liz.**

Liz opens the door to the Wild Pony and stops when she sees that Maria isn't alone.

Alex sits across from her in a leather jacket and dirty baggy jeans looking like he belongs there and not like he’s been gone for the last ten years just like she has.

They both look different and yet the same.

Maria looks more comfortable in her own skin, but her style is still exactly the same.

Alex looks more different, and decidedly less comfortable than Maria.

The last time she’d seen Alex he’d had his septum pierced and wore eyeliner and looked too skinny. Now there were no piercings, but he was wearing more necklaces than she’s ever seen anyone, but Maria wear, and his shoulders stretched out the fabric of his leather jacket.

She watches him as Maria makes her a mug of whatever tea he’s drinking and notes that the bruises on the side of his face match the ones on Michael's face.

Maria sets the mug down in front of her and purses her mouth. 

“Technically, you already knew that I was psychic.”

Liz gives her an incredulous look, cupping her hands around the mug and sliding it across the bar so that she could lean in and smell and then lifts it to her mouth for a sip. 

Lavender and Chamomile.

“Okay, it’s not the same thing, but magic really wasn’t that big of a part of my life back then,” she says leaning against the bar to look at Liz in the eyes. “It had ruined my mom’s and she didn’t want the same thing to happen to me. She let me make the choice once I turned eighteen, and I decided that I needed a way to protect myself since I was going to be tangled up with witches whether I liked it or not.”

Liz narrows her eyes at her word choice and opens her mouth to speak, but Alex snorts and she looks at him as he gives Maria a look.

“And once you started doing spells, you liked how it made you feel.”

Maria rolls her eyes, while Liz looks between them.

“How does it make you feel?”

“High and out of control,” Maria says making a face at Liz.

“Powerful and euphoric,” Alex says at the same time.

“But mostly high,” Maria snaps making a shoo gesture at Alex. “Don’t listen to the Witch Hunter. They’re all mostly strung out on magic all the time.”

Alex just rolls his eyes and gives Liz a look.

“So magic is like a drug?” Liz asks setting the mug down.

Alex licks his lips, “To non witches, which is everyone who isn’t a full blooded witch, using magic messes with your brain chemistry. It floods you with endorphins and serotonin and adrenaline, but only while you’re using the magic. The stronger the spell, the more you feel, the harder the crash.”

Liz files that away to process later, because it sounds like it has to do with biology, with  _ science _ and that's something that she can definitely understand.

"And what about you?" She asks Alex.

Alex licks his lips and gives her a kind of sheepish smile. "My whole family is steeped in magic and traditions old enough to predate the bible. I tried really hard not to have anything to do with it, but my father made sure that I didn't get much of a choice in the end."

He looks down at his tea and looks at Maria making a face, "Can I get something stronger than this?"

Maria rolls her eyes but moves and comes back with a bottle of whiskey and a glass.

"I wanted to be a musician," Alex says as Maria pours his drink. "My father wasn't happy about it, but he had three powerful sons with specialties all under his control so he didn’t try too hard to force me to Activate."

Alex takes the glass and downs it one go, making both Liz and Maria raise their eyebrows in surprise. 

“I didn’t want to have anything to do with magic,” he says gasping a little wetly at the burn of the liquor and raising a brow at Maria until she rolls her eyes and pours him another drink. “Until Michael.”

"Right," Liz says slowly. "You two were together?"

Alex freezes for a second before he exhales and looks down at his glass. "Sort of. He saved my life."

And then he takes a sip of his drink.

Liz looks at Maria who shrugs back at her.

“It was all very-” he makes a face and looks at them, raising his eyebrows. “ _ Twilight _ .”

“He stopped you from being crushed to death by a van?” Liz asks raising an eyebrow at him.

Alex licks his lips. “Something like that, only it was his truck, and it was his fault that it spun out of control in the first place. I didn’t know he was a witch then, and I had offered him a place to stay since his truck had been a lost cause, and then he showed me what he could do.”

He looks down into his glass, and seems to be lost in the memories before Maria nudges him slightly and he looks back up at her, and then over to Liz.

“The point is that after that I wanted to know more about Michael and all he wanted to do was learn more about magic, so I got involved, and we did spells together, and it was pretty much the best time of my life, those couple of weeks with him, until my father found out.”

He picks up his drink and downs the rest of it making a face and setting the glass back down.

“I didn’t know then,” Alex starts after a few minutes of silence where Liz stares at Maria raising her eyebrows and Maria shrugs at her because she has no idea what Alex is going to say either.

“But whenever you use magic, the Council can track it, and he found us, and I couldn’t really do anything because I was still under the effects of the spell, and he poured a curse over the family Talisman meant to be mine, and he forced it on me and then smashed the rest of the glass vial over Michael’s hand, cutting him open and making sure the curse spread to his blood. He looked so shocked and so scared, and he did something to the curse before he disappeared, but I’ll never forget how he looked at me before he was gone, like I was the worst thing that ever happened to him.”

His voice trails off and he inhales deeply, closing his eyes and dropping his head on top of the table.

“I didn’t know what the curse did until I came back, and it hurts him when I get too close. Which should be more than enough incentive to never want to see me again, but-”

“He’s being all  _ Michael  _ about it?” Maria guesses, and rolls her eyes when Alex and Liz look at her with matching quizzical expressions. 

“I’ve been here in Roswell this whole time, of course I made other friends,” and then she narrows her eyes at Alex. “And Guerin is my best friend, and if you’re not planning on sticking around, you need to leave him alone.”

Alex exhales roughly. “I already told you. I needed his help with the demon-”

“That’s right!” Liz exclaims interrupting what seems to be an ongoing argument. “Michael said that the demon left me alone because it found a more suitable candidate for possession.”

Her voice trails off as she notices that Alex seems to shrink in on himself, and she remembers again the feeling of the demon trying to take a hold of her, and shudders trying to get rid of the feeling.

When she focuses back on Alex, he’s watching her with a knowing eye.

“The only good thing about demon possession is that you don’t remember what happened while you were possessed. It’s the one thing I hate about Council orders. It feels like a possession, but you remember what you did.”

“Council orders?” Liz asks carefully.

Alex exhales roughly and looks to Maria who pours him another drink without a word.

He grabs the drink but doesn’t lift it to his mouth.

“When you’re Activated, you’re branded by your family sigil. It works like an electric collar. Certain orders given a certain way, you can’t disobey. Disobedience equals pain. And the pain isn’t worth the disobedience.”

He downs half of the drink and gives Liz a half smile. “Distance makes it easier to disobey. My father kept demanding that I come here, but it was easy to tell him no, and mean it.”

“Why did you come?” Maria asks, and Alex turns to look at her. “My mom has also been trying to get you to come back. So there must be a reason that you avoided it for so long.”

Alex finishes his drink and grimaces. “Mimi had a vision that came with a Prophecy the night that she and Jim smuggled me to Europe.”

Liz looks at him with a furrowed brow. “Prophecy?”

Maria nods her head, darting her eyes to her before looking back at Alex. “My mom and I, we get visions sometimes. What was the Prophecy?”

Alex licks his lips and closes his eyes. 

“ _ When the Mortal Touched by Angel and Demon Both Traps a Demon _

_ And the Hound Cries Out Brokenhearted _

_ And the Oracle is in Two Places at Once _

_ The Veil will Fall Away and Release the Father of all Demons _ ”

Maria looks at Alex with wide eyes before she moves a book full of sketches over in front of her and starts going through them.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Liz asks looking at Alex.

Alex turns to her and his eyes are a little glassy, “The only thing I do know is that my father believes that killing me will fulfill one part of the prophecy, but he doesn’t realize, that he’s got it the wrong way around.”

Liz narrows her eyes at him, and then looks back to Maria mouth open to ask her if it was a good idea to give Alex alcohol, but her gaze is caught by one of the sketches that she sets aside.

It’s of Liz, holding on to a dagger, a look on her face that she’s never seen before while she lifts her hand in the air, stabbing against what looks like a large shapeless shadow.

“That’s me?” Liz asks, carefully picking the sketch up.

“I had a vision earlier,” Maria says. “That sounds exactly like that prophecy. I’m just trying to put the pieces together.”

“And what does that have to do with me?” Liz asks setting the sketch back down and looking back up at Maria.

Maria gives her a very serious look, “I think you’re the Chosen One. The  _ Mortal touched by Angel and Demon Both _ who is going to Trap the Demon.”

Liz laughs, and then looks at how serious Maria looks and at the way that Alex is nodding his head along as though this makes  _ sense _ and she exhales long and low.

“I need a drink."

Maria gives her a sympathetic smile. “You shouldn’t drink if you had the tea.”

“Why not?” Liz asks, a little confused.

Alex faceplants into the bar, boneless and sudden, and Liz jumps up watching him startled.

A muffled snore can be heard from where is face is pressed into the bar.

“That’s why,” Maria says sounding amused and fond.

Liz gives her a look, and Maria just smiles before she’s reaching forward, putting her hands on Alex’s shoulders, and then before Liz can ask her what she’s doing, they’re both gone in a swirl of pale yellow sparks.

Liz blinks in shock, and looks around and tries not to freak out too much, and then Maria is back, pale yellow sparks surround her as she leans against the bar again, inhaling deeply and smiles at Liz.

“What?” Liz exclaims looking at Maria like she’s crazy.

Maria’s smile widens. “Witches have their powers, and those of us who are non witches can specialize in specific powers.”

She tugs one of the necklaces out from beneath her shirt and pulls out a golden chain with a golden charm in the shape of a two interlocking circles sliding along a single bead holding them together.

“In order to be specialized you have to study the power that you want, and then make the charm yourself using your own essence to create it. It doesn’t always work, but when it does-”

She smiles at Liz again, and closes her eyes before she’s gone again the sparks burning bright against Liz’s retina.

“-it’s pretty simple to control,” Maria’s voice comes from behind her, and Liz turns around fast just in time to see her jumping down from on top of the pool table.

She stumbles a little and has to catch herself on the table. “Okay, I think that’s enough for today. I’m not a Witch Hunter after all, and magic tires you out easily if you’re not used to using it.”

She walks over to Liz, and sits down beside her on the stool where Alex had been sitting.

“So being psychic isn’t the same as being specialized?”

Maria shakes her head, leaning her elbow on the bar and resting her cheek on her hand. “Some Witch Hunters are more sensitive to the cosmos, is what my mom says. Alex would probably be able to explain it better, but the way I see it, even if I didn’t have some witch blood running through my veins, I would still be psychic, maybe not have visions, but there are just some things that are human nature.”

Liz sighs and shakes her head as she copies Maria’s movements giving her a soft smile, “I don’t know how I missed it. It’s obvious now that I think about it. There was always something magical about you.”

Maria smiles back at her.

“I don’t know how I missed that Max wasn’t human either, we spent a lot of time together in high school,” she furrows her brow and her head starts to ache a little. 

She sits up pressing her fingers against her temple and shaking her head. 

“I just,” she licks her lips and looks back to Maria who is watching her with worried eyes. “Something Isobel said about Max having a crush on me in high school, it feels familiar, like I already knew, but I don’t think he ever told me that, but at the same time-”

She hisses a little as the pain spikes in her head.

“Drink some tea,” Maria says pushing the mug towards her.

Liz had only taken a sip before Alex had started talking, but she grabs the mug, and tries to relax.

Stress headaches are a bitch, and she’s been getting them more and more lately. Since she’d started thinking about heading back to Roswell.

She sips the lukewarm tea, and jumps when she feels Maria’s hand on her shoulder.

Liz looks at her, and Maria’s eyes widen as she seems to focus so intently on her that Liz feels like she’s frozen, stuck in time, and she feels a slight pressure in her skull, like someone is trying to squeeze her head, and then it’s gone, and Maria looks angry.

“Isobel,” she says, and Liz gives her a confused look.

“What about Isobel?”

“She’s also psychic, but unlike me and my visions, her powers are infinitely more invasive and pervasive. She can manipulate memories, and she has the ability to influence you into doing things. Like, she can’t put the thought in your head, but she can influence you to go for it even if you weren’t too sure.”

Liz swallows hard. “Like hiding memories about Max and making me leave Roswell?”

Maria chews on her bottom lip. “Something like that, I can help you unscramble the memories, if you want?”

Liz shakes her head. “I wanted to leave Roswell, and after Rosa-”

Maria stands up at that, and turns to head behind the bar, almost as though she’s avoiding looking at Liz.

“What are you doing?”

“There’s a spell that I can use to bring forth lost memories, if you really want to know.”

Maria drops several jars of dried herbs and vials of liquid and what looks like a jar of rock salt.

“Okay,” Liz says swallowing hard. “What do I have to do?”

“Nothing yet,” Maria says and gives her a half smile, before she starts getting things ready.

Liz watches intently.

Maria opens the salt jar first, pouring the salt into a small mound and then she hovered her palm over it before snapping her fingers and the salt formed a double circle right on top of the bar. Liz raises an eyebrow at that, but Maria is too concentrated on what she’s doing to pay attention to her.

She takes different herbs out of the jars, some that Liz doesn’t recognize shaped like fans, and others that she does like the sage, and she braids them together, before setting it right in the middle of the circle on top of a black metal bowl.

She opens one of the vials, and tips some of the liquid onto her fingers, the scent of rosemary fills the air, and then lavender follows from the second vial. She mixes the oils against her fingers and then traces symbols into the wood outside of the salt circle.

Liz wants to ask her what they mean, but Maria seems to be in the zone and she doesn’t know if something bad will happen if she stops her.

Maria looks up at her then, and smiles, “We’ll need to hold hands for this next part.”

Liz licks her lips. “Michael told me that all magic comes with a price.”

Maria’s smile goes a little fond. “Yes, there is a price, but it’s nothing bad, trust me.”

“Always,” Liz says and reaches forward, and Maria presses their palms together before threading their fingers, and holding on tight.

Liz watches her as she closes her eyes, and begins to chant underneath her breath in a strange language that Liz doesn’t really recognize, but sounds like a mixture of Old English and Latin.

Liz jumps a little when the herbs ignite in flames, and then the scent of the oils gets stronger and mixes with the smoke coming from the herbs, and Liz looks to see how the oil seems to be evaporating, as Maria’s chanting gets faster, and louder, and her hold on Liz’s hands goes tighter, and the air around them seems to be filled with sparks as wind starts to sweep across the bar, blowing everything not heavy enough around in a whirlwind around them.

Liz feels a tingle in her chest, right against the mark, and a shudder that works up from her right ankle and up the rest of her leg, and she feels a tug in her brain, and the headache explodes behind her eyes, and Maria stops chanting and makes a pained sound and then-

_ -Liz feels her heart break. Isobel’s voice is still ringing in her ears. “I love you, please don’t do this!”  _

_ How could she be so stupid? How could she not have realized the truth? How did she let herself be so blinded by her feelings that she didn’t realize what was right in front of her? _

_ She looks over to where Rosa has tears running down her cheeks. _

_ She says something too low for Liz to catch, but it makes Isobel’s shoulders slump in relief as she moves in close. _

_ Isobel reaches up and cradles Rosa’s face in her hands, and Rosa closes her eyes tight, but the look on her face tells Liz all that she needs to know and it sends another bolt of heart break going through her. _

_ And then before Isobel leans in, her hands drag down to Rosa’s neck and she hisses something too low for Liz to hear, but Rosa’s eyes go wide with fear, and then Isobel’s hands twist, and Rosa falls to the floor. _

_ Dead- _

Liz pulls away from Maria so roughly that she almost falls backwards. 

The stool goes tumbling to the floor as Maria bends over the salt circle and pants like she just ran a marathon.

“What was that?” Liz demands, and when Maria looks at her, Liz can tell that her pupils are blown wide, and her eyes are glassy, and she looks at Liz like she doesn’t know who she is, before she blinks a few times, and shakes her head sharply.

Liz swallows down the anger that is simmering right on the tip of her tongue, and moves closer.

“Are you okay?” she asks a little stiffly. 

Maria nods her head rapidly, still leaning heavily against the bar. “Side effects, just give me a second.”

Liz remembers them saying that magic is like a drug, and while she thinks that Maria won’t lie to her if she asks her point blank, people are always more honest when they’re drugged.

“What was that?” she asks again, and Maria looks up at her, and bites down on her lip. 

“My memory,” she says after a second.

Liz swallows hard again. “So that really happened? That’s what happened to Rosa?”

Maria’s eyes fill with tears. “Liz, just give me a second. I can explain everything.”

Liz shakes her head, and takes a step back from her. “I need to go.”

“Wait,” Maria says and reaches for her, but Liz takes a step back. “It’s more complicated than what you saw.”

Liz shakes her head, and tries to gather her thoughts, but then she’s hit with the thought that Max was there. Max  _ lied  _ to her. 

Well, not really. He omitted the truth, which somehow feels worse.

She shakes her head quickly, and turns around ignoring Maria’s voice as she calls after her.

Liz walks out of the Wild Pony and gets into her car, and turns it on, turning into the street with a squeal of the tires and retracing her steps back to Max’s house.

 

**.maria.**

Maria brakes the truck hard enough that it feels like it might tip over, and she can feel the shudder that goes through the metal when she feels Guerin tug it to a standstill while she turns the keys in the ignition. She stumbles out of her seat, and has to hold on to the car door to regain her equilibrium, but by the time she reaches Liz, she feels a little more stable.

Liz reaches towards Isobel, and Maria holds on to her tight, wrapping her fingers around her wrist, and her other arm around Liz’s waist. 

Everyone is arguing and talking over each other, and Maria can tell that she got there just in time, but that no one knows why Liz is angry.

“Liz, she didn’t kill Rosa,” she says, and it makes everyone stop.

“What?” Isobel demands, while Guerin and Max share a look behind her.

Liz is trembling in Maria’s hold, but she doesn’t struggle as Maria tugs her backwards a little and holds her tight.

“She was in love with her okay,” Maria says into Liz’s hair. “She didn’t kill her.”

“But I saw it,” Liz says voice thick with tears. “I  _ saw _ her do it.”

“She wasn’t in control,” Max is the one to say and his voice sounds pleading, and Maria feels how Liz jerks in her hold, and she holds on to her tighter.

Guerin hisses something too low that Maria can’t hear, but she feels Liz inhaling deeply, and trying to calm herself down.

“Someone needs to tell me  _ exactly  _ what happened, right now,” she says slowly through her teeth. “And don’t be vague enough that you’re basically lying to me.”

Guerin turns Isobel towards him and looks at her intently, while Max tries to catch Liz’s eye, but Maria can tell that she’s ignoring him.

Isobel turns to them and looks at Maria, who ignores.

“Okay,” she says and sounds completely put upon. “Fine. The truth is that I was in love with Rosa, okay? We started talking because she’d just figured out that she could do magic and I wanted to do magic with someone who wouldn’t put me into a coma because they wanted to try some strange ritual they found written in the back of a spell book.”

“I’ve apologized for that a hundred times already, Izzy,” Guerin says, pouting as he leans back against one of the wooden beams holding up the roof of his balcony.

Isobel ignores him, “I taught her low level mostly materialistic spells, and she taught me how to make someone come in under five minutes.”

“Ugh,” Liz says and turns her face away while Max snaps out Isobel’s name.

Isobel rolls her eyes as she looks at Max, “She said she wanted the truth.”

“Maybe a little less about you having sex with her sister and a little more about what happened the night of the Anti Prom,” Maria interrupts before Max can say anything.

Isobel’s gaze snaps to her, but Maria looks to where Guerin seems to have checked out of the conversation, clenching the fingers of his left hand.

Maria bites down on her lip.

Isobel starts talking.

“We were happy,” Isobel says. “But like I said before, some creep had latched into my head when my powers were Awakened, and he became obsessed with her. I didn’t know this then. All I knew was that one second I was completely sure that Rosa loved me back, and then she just dumped me for an older guy no one knew, and I was hurt and stupid and wanted to make her jealous, so I asked her best friend to go with me, knowing exactly how she felt about me.”

Maria’s arms tighten around Liz, and Liz drops one of her hands to Maria’s, threading their fingers together tightly.

It had been ten years, and Isobel had apologized, countlessly, for that and for everything that came afterwards, and it had taken a while and a lot of nights of drinking themselves to oblivion, and a lot of nights spent awake making sure that Guerin hadn’t accidentally killed himself using too much magic, and even more nights spent learning magic together, and too few nights wrapped around each other in Maria’s bed, but Maria had eventually forgiven her.

"Nothing went the way I planned it to go," Isobel continues. "But Maria was the one to realize that Rosa wasn't acting like herself. And with her help, I figured out that the creep who invited her to Anti Prom had a connection to me."

Maria watches her as Isobel looks away from them, lost in her own thoughts. It's been a while since she's talked about this, preferring to pretend that nothing is wrong until she can't anymore.

"I tried to tell her about it, but she was acting strange and we couldn't figure out why, so when she left with him, we followed her. The rest is kind of a blur for me until after Maria forced him out of him head, but by then, Rosa was gone."

"You mean dead, not gone," Liz snaps, trembling in Maria's hold.

Isobel snaps her gaze to Liz and then away. "Yes."

Maria inhales deeply, and starts to speak when Isobel doesn't say anything else.

"We followed Rosa to the Mines, and he had all the things to do a really strong spell," Maria says, and Liz jumps a little when she starts to speak, but doesn't pull away.

"We never found out what it was for, but we figured it had to be something bad. Once we got there, Isobel started acting weird, and that’s how we figured out what his powers were.”

“He could manipulate people into doing what he wants,” Guerin says pushing away from where he’d been leaning to stand next to Isobel.

“I got there in time to stop Isobel from hurting Max or Maria, but the only way to stop him was to cut his connection to Isobel. So, after knocking him unconscious, we treated it like a possession, and with Maria and Max’s help, we were able to break the connection, and that’s when we figured out that Isobel will instinctively seek out a third connection if she doesn’t have it.”

“And then comes what you saw,” Maria hurries along before Liz can ask who the third person is. “After Isobel established the third connection, she told Rosa that she loved her and that broke his hold over Rosa, but somehow, he’d gotten into Isobel’s head again, and, well you saw.”

“After that, Maria used her connection to force him out of my head for the last time, and I killed him, because he used my hands to kill her," Isobel swallows hard looking away from them.

"And then I brought her back," she continues voice low and rough.

Liz full body flinches and pushes back against Maria, “What do you mean-?”

“I mean that I brought her back to life,” Isobel snaps looking at Liz with wild eyes. “Like Max did to you. I brought her back and a demon possessed the body of the creep I killed, we tried to fight him off, but we weren’t strong enough and that’s when the Witch Hunters came running. They trapped the demon, but we don’t know what happened to Rosa. She disappeared sometime during the fight, and I have no idea what happened to her after that.”

There is silence for a few seconds, while Isobel walks purposely back inside of Max’s house, and Liz seems to process the fact that her sister is not dead, but  _ missing _ .

“Liz,” Max says, and Liz pulls away from Maria then.

Maria clenches her fingers tightly so that she doesn’t reach out and drag her back again, feeling vulnerable and exposed.

She feels fingers wrap around her wrist and looks up into Guerin’s worried eyes and gives him a smile when he squeezes her wrist in question.

“Liz, I-” Max starts again, and Maria can see him moving closer to her out of the corner of her eye.

“You lied to me,” Liz says and her voice is raw and hurt, and Maria shuts her eyes tightly.

“Liz,” Max says again, reaching towards her, and Liz steps out of reach. 

“ _ Don’t _ touch me!”

Guerin tugs on her hand and motions for them to head inside with a head tilt. Maria nods her head quickly and follows behind him.

Maria spots Isobel leaning against Max’s desk with a glass of whiskey in her hand.

She walks over to her, pulling her hand away from Guerin’s grip, and just grabs the bottle and takes a swig from it, grimacing as she swallows and takes another.

“How did she find out?” Isobel blurts out, and then makes a face.

Maria sets the bottle down too hard on top of the desk and looks at Guerin who looks away like he’s already figured out how she could’ve known.

“I found your block on her memories and tried to take it down, but the spell rebounded and hit me and showed her a part of my memory of that night.”

Isobel doesn’t say anything as she lifts her glass back to her mouth and drinking the rest of her whiskey in one long gulp.

“Why?” Maria demands, and Isobel exhales a long breath.

“Because Max was going to tell her about everything, not just Rosa, but about magic, and you know it’s against the rules to tell mortals anything unless there are extenuating circumstances,” Guerin answers.

Maria looks back to him, and grabs the bottle of whiskey again.

“We’re sorry we didn’t tell you,” Guerin offers, and Maria just looks away.

If she wanted an apology, she would’ve preferred it from the person who’s slept in her bed naked.

She watches Isobel, until Isobel snaps, “What?”

Maria just shakes her head and looks back to Guerin who is looking out of the patio doors, clenching the fingers of his left hand open and close, over and over, and she looks outside and notes that he’s facing in the direction of the Wild Pony.

“Guerin,” she says slowly, and Guerin turns to her equally slow. 

"About Alex-" she starts but he shakes his head immediately while Isobel sighs, leaning harder against the desk.

"But-" she tries again, and Guerin just sighs. 

"Thanks for worrying about me, DeLuca, but I can take care of myself," he says giving her a look that telegraphs, drop it.

"He doesn't consider Roswell his home anymore,” she says ignoring him because he needs to know. “He's going to leave. You need to be careful."

Michael gives her a blank look before he’s shaking his head and turning. He walks out of the doors, and Maria can see Liz and Max standing way too close, before Michael’s angry exit interrupts them.

Liz takes several steps back and shakes her head and then turns and heads towards her car, ignoring Max who calls out after her.

Michael peels away, blowing dust and dirt in the wind as he speeds away and Liz follows in a more sedate pace.

Maria sighs and rubs her forehead, not looking at Isobel closes the door with a flick of her fingers.

"Look," Isobel starts, raising a sardonic eyebrow when Maria looks at her. "I don't like this whole Alex Manes Thing any more than you do, but you seem to be overly invested."

Maria scoffs rolling her eyes. "I know you can't quite fathom why someone who's not related to him would like Michael as more than just someone to spend the night with-"

Isobel immediately starts to protest, but Maria talks over her. "But I care about him, and I refuse to watch him spiral like he did the last time that Alex left. Better to hurt him with the truth now than for it to hurt him much more later, because he got invested."

Isobel eyes are intent on hers and Maria can feel the way that she's forcing herself not to just seek the answer to what she wants to know.

"What?" Maria snaps when Isobel just continues to look at her.

"I know what I said when you told me that we couldn't do this anymore, but Michael and Max are off limits."

Maria scoffs and looks away from her to the door, willing Max to walk in and interrupt this conversation so that she can leave without it looking like she's running away.

"I mean it, if you sleep with Michael I'll never speak to you again."

Maria makes a face at the threat, but her heart starts beating fast in her chest.

"If I it was a possibility, I would sleep with him just for that reason alone, but I'm not interested in getting mixed up in whatever he has going on with Alex, and even if I wanted to, it would be none of your business."

"Michael is  _ always _ my business," Isobel snaps. "And so are you."

Maria just shakes her head rolling her eyes, but doesn't respond.

"You're feeling less restless than you were this morning," Isobel says after a loaded silence where they could hear Max dropping to sit down on one of the chairs on either side of the door on the porch.

Maria inhales deeply going along with the change in subject.

"It was a vision, and a pretty big one. I'm not sure when it's going to happen, but it feels like soon," she looks at Isobel who is looking at her with narrowed eyes. "And we  _ all _ have to prepare."

Isobel narrows her eyes even more, and Maria feels the worry spilling between their bond, before she looks away and the connection cuts off abruptly.

"I'm going to do a ritual tonight, at Park's," Maria offers in an effort to keep the peace.

Isobel turns back to her, and tilts her head before she nods her head. "Okay, I'll be there with the works."

Maria nods her head back and chews on her lip wanting to say something else but Max chooses that moment to come inside. 

He has a serious look on his face and Isobel's attention moves completely from Maria to her brother, so suddenly that Maria almost feels the psychic backlash.

She ducks out of the door and escapes before the fireworks start.

 

**.alex.**

Alex isn't surprised that he woke up in the DeLuca's guest room, he is surprised that it's been ten years and the wallpaper border on the walls is still the same.

The last time that he'd woken up in this room, he'd been fighting off the effects of the spell he did with Michael and his father's forced Activation of his Witch Hunter genes.

He hadn't understood then the gravity of what they did. He still doesn't fully understand it, but he can  _ feel  _ it.

Andro is still wrapped around him, and doesn't budge even when Alex nudges them and suggests they go to Michael.

Alex looks at his watch and curses, getting up quickly and folding the sheet a little too fast and clumsy, but some habits are hard to kick.

He can't believe he let this happen. He knew it was a bad idea to drink after drinking the tea, but he had really needed that drink.

Talking about Michael was hard, it was even harder because of the things he  _ wasn't  _ talking about.

Alex ducks into the bathroom and splashes water on his face, hissing a little as he rubs against his already irritated skin. 

He looks at his reflection, water pouring down his face, and for a split second, his eyes are completely silver, glinting in the bathroom lights and his open mouth is full of sharp teeth. Alex blinks and shakes his head and the water droplets fall against the sink and splatter on the mirror.

Alex opens his eyes and looks at his reflection and sees his face, bruises and cuts and all.

He blinks a few times, and not for the first time wishes that he could use a ready made healing spell.

Alex freezes and wraps his fingers around his wrist and feels, nothing.

He blinks rapidly and remembers the demon pulling at Michael through him because that spell was so strong it was tied to his very soul, and Alex who never found a reason good enough to take the bracelet off, even when his own life was on the line, tore it off without a second thought because Michael was in danger.

Michael had said that he'd made a temporary one and while Alex remembers all of that, it didn't click until now what it means.

Alex swallows hard and focuses on his reflection. There's only one way to be sure.

Alex dries his face roughly with one of the towels and leaves the bathroom.

Maria is behind the bar setting everything up for opening, and she looks a little like she's lost in her own world and jumps when Alex presses a hand to her arm.

She blinks at him, and then gives him a weak smile. "Be careful out there tonight. I have a bad feeling."

Alex gives her a look, "Tomorrow night a demon is going to use the power of the full moon to try and tear open the veil between worlds."

She gives him a startled look as though she hadn't figured out the date of the prophecy, but Alex was almost one hundred percent sure. His father was getting too sloppy the closer they got to the full moon.

"That and your bad feeling could be connected," he finishes when she doesn't speak.

Maria rolls her eyes at him. “Just watch yourself okay? You’re going to make a mistake tonight and you’re not going to realize it until it’s too late.”

Alex pulls his bottom lip into his mouth. He's not planning on making any mistakes tonight, but he pats Maria's arm and nods his head.

“I promise to be careful.”

She rolls her eyes again, and pushes him lightly towards the door.

Alex makes his way quickly to the Facility.

He’s not surprised to find it practically deserted, but he is surprised to find Jenna in the Monitoring room.

He pauses on his way to the Medic wing and leans into the room, looking at Jenna curiously as she watches the monitor intensely with a pissed off expression.

“Everything okay?” he asks and she startles and looks at him, raising a judging eyebrow at the fact that he hasn't changed.

“Just peachy,” she says giving him a smile that’s all teeth.

He raises an eyebrow at her and she just rolls her eyes and looks back to the monitor.

“How’d everything go with your house?”

Jenna gives him a look. “The good news is that the  _ Council _ registered the spike, and they want us to investigate who could’ve possibly given the hellhounds such a strong curse. Your father of course, let them know that he will be handling the investigation personally.”

Alex licks his lips, swallowing down the apology on the tip of his tongue.

“So I’m here, pretending that I don’t know that he’s breaking the law trying to kill you because we don’t have any proof that he actually is, while he’s out there doing god knows what in an attempt to do  _ god knows what _ -”

Alex is about to cut her off and tell her the truth, since he’s going to need her help anyway, when the monitor lets out a loud noise.

Jenna’s eyes drop to the monitor and she makes a face. “Flint,” she says, pursing her mouth.

Alex is about to walk over to see for himself, when he feels a tug right in the pit of his stomach.

He stops and feels how Andro unfurls around him.

Jenna looks up at him as he gasps, and their eyes meet and then he blinks and he’s gone.

Alex stumbles a little on the landing and grunts in pain when Andro tears away from him, and then there’s a maned wolf the size of a lion between Michael and his brothers who all scramble away.

Alex’s disorientation is short lived when he realizes that his brothers are more than ready to deal with Andro.

He runs towards Michael and drags him to his feet.

Michael looks surprised to see him, but before he can ask anything, Hunter is throwing fireballs at them. 

Alex tugs a dagger out of his pocket getting ready to throw it at him, but Michael drags him down as the fireballs sail past them.

“Don’t you know how to duck?” Michael asks sarcastically, hands wrapped around Alex’s wrist tightly.

Alex doesn’t answer, already pulling away to throw the dagger at his brother.

Flint appears right next to Hunter and then teleports them away, and Alex calls the dagger back to his hands.

Jacob manages to subdue Andro, tightly winding them in the lasso glowing whitesilver, and Alex feels their annoyance like a prickle down the length of his spine.

Hunter and Flint appear beside Jacob, and Alex swallows hard.

Michael moves to stand next to him, hissing in annoyance and pain and flexing his left hand. 

Alex tucks the dagger into his boot and wraps his fingers around Michael’s wrist, pulling him closer to Alex’s side.

“What are you guys doing?” Alex asks turning his attention back to his brothers. “The only magical spike tonight was you teleporting him here.”

Hunter clenches his jaw while Flint looks away and Jacob opens his mouth before it snaps shut.

Which tells Alex everything that he needs to know.

Alex scoffs, “Still doing Dad’s dirty work, I see. Don’t you ever get tired of not thinking for yourselves?”

Flint shakes his head giving him a look. “Don’t you ever get tired of being the black sheep?”

Alex rolls his eyes, “Don’t you ever get tired of having zero personality?”

Flint opens his mouth to respond, but Hunter cuts him off. “Enough! We have our orders, and they include using any means necessary.”

“Dad doesn’t want you to kill him,” Alex says taking a step forward only to be dragged back by Michael’s hand. “He needs him alive.”

Flint suddenly looks a little uncomfortable, while Jacob looks away. Hunter inhales deeply. “The same cannot be said about you.”

Alex scoffs. “If you wanted to shock me, you’re going to have to try harder.”

Michael’s hand goes tight around his wrist, and Alex glances at him, which was a mistake.

“Flint,” Hunter says, and then Alex feels the space behind him suddenly buzzing with energy and a dark cloud of sparks, nothing like Maria’s soft yellow glow or Andro’s black smoky ribbons, surrounds him and then tugs him away.

Alex pulls away from Flint once they reappear wherever and see that they’re not too far from Andro.

Andro’s consciousness simmers in anger right at the back of Alex’s mind, and Alex inhales deeply and turns to his brother.

Flint gives him a condescending look, and then seems like he’s going to teleport away, but Alex is already in motion, tugging out his lasso from the pocket of his jacket and immediately throwing it around Flint.

It makes the magic fizzle to nothingness around him, as Alex traps his arms to his chest and tugs pulling him down to his knees.

Alex takes a step forward, and then lightning strikes down right in front of him, making him jump backwards as the rope is burnt and Flint pulls away, dropping the lasso to the floor and his hands moving quickly through the air, words spilling out of his mouth too fast for Alex to catch, and then he thrusts his hands out towards Alex. Alex untangles his hands from the rope and reaches into his pocket for another dagger wishing that he had his crossbow with him.

The spell hits the Protective barrier with a sound not unlike splintering glass, which is exactly what the barrier does, glows bright and gold with Michael's sigil and then splinters like glass.

It's enough to mess with the spell a little, but Alex knows that his brothers have never gone easy on him.

The spell hits him right in the chest and sends him flying backwards. Thousands upon thousands of tiny bolts of electricity course through him, as he lands on the floor and slides several more feet back. He gasps against the pain, and then grits his teeth closing his eyes tight.

Fuck, this wasn’t exactly how he wanted to find out if he was right or not, but at least now he knew.

Alex tries to sit up, and another wave of electricity courses through him, down his right leg, making it shine bright blue with the healing spell.

Alex bites down on the inside of his cheek, and struggles to his feet.

He can just make out Flint’s surprised face, and Jacob’s absolutely gobsmacked one.

Alex stumbles, but catches himself, putting more of his weight on his left leg, and keeping upright through sheer force of will.

Flint laughs in disbelief and arrogant, smile widening even more when Alex steps forward and nearly falls to the floor again.

Fuck, he thinks again trying to push through the pain.

“Well then,” Flint says mockingly. “Looks like your good luck has finally run out. Jacob, I’ll leave him to you.”

Flint teleports away, right into the fight between Michael and Hunter.

Alex gets distracted momentarily by Michael tossing the fireballs back at Hunter and Flint, and very nearly gets struck by lightning again.

He jumps out of the way, going down on one knee, and curses himself. 

Getting hit by a spell for the first time in forever, rattled him a lot more than he even wants to admit to himself, let alone his brothers.

He forces himself to think quickly through the pain.

Jacob’s specialty is lightning, but lightning that strikes down from the sky, he can’t just manifest it from anywhere, and lightning is difficult to control once you let it go, meaning that close combat is going to have to be the way to deal with him.

Alex only has to get close enough.

The next strike falls from the sky and Alex somersaults forward, rolling twice before he loses momentum.

Jacob looks at him with wide eyes and seems to realize what Alex is trying to do, because he starts to back up.

Alex tugs a pair of bolas from his jacket and throws it at his brother. The heavy balls tied together with strong wire, wind rapidly around his shins and trip him to the floor as Alex pushes himself to his feet and runs the few steps towards him.

Jacob manages to get himself untied quickly, and rolls away from the dagger that Alex throws at him.

Alex calls the dagger back to himself, and gets into position, curling one hand around the hilt of the dagger, and his other hand into a fist and lifting them both in the air.

Jacob gets to his feet and swallows hard, nothing in his posture suggesting he wants a fight.

“What’s the matter, Jacob?” Alex taunts. “Afraid of a little one on one?”

Jacob gives him a look, “I have no interest in dying, no.”

Alex laughs involuntarily, dropping his hands to his sides, but holding the dagger tighter in his hand. “Why are you doing this?”

Jacob licks his lips. “We have  _ orders _ .”

“What does Dad want with Michael, anyway?” he asks even though he has a hunch.

Jacob shrugs a little. “I don’t know. Hunter is the only one that he told. But he did say we had to get him back to the Facility before the full moon.”

Alex feels a jolt go down his spine at the thought that he was actually right. His father actually wanted him dead because he thought that Michael was the Hound.

Before he can ask him anything else, he feels a tug right in the pit of his stomach as a horrible pained yell sounds in his ears, and he looks over Jacob’s shoulder almost like in a trance to see Michael falling to his knees, blood staining the corner of his mouth as he looks up directly at Alex, breathing heavily, eyes wide with fear that Alex has only ever seen once.

Alex feels a stronger tug and turns towards Andro, whose eyes flash silver a question that only has one answer.

Alex had thought that the demon was going to kill him that first night, before Andro had appeared and had pushed it away before sinking into the depths of Alex’s soul and showing him exactly what he needed to do to channel their energy, the only thing they wanted in exchange was Alex’s vow that he would protect Michael, no matter what.

Alex bows his head and exhales opening up the connection between them and feels Andro reaching back immediately, the bond clicks into place, stronger than the magic in the lasso keeping Andro in place.

Andro dissolves into thin air and reappears surrounding Alex in a whirlwind before they sink down into his bones.

Alex lets out a sigh as the magic seeps into his skin and courses through his blood.

He grins at Jacob whose eyes go ever wider as Alex snaps his teeth in his direction before he blinks and is standing right in front of Michael.

Both of his brothers jump backwards at his sudden appearance, and Alex raises a hand in the air and the fireballs Hunter had thrown to probably knock Michael unconscious hit the forcefield surrounding them, keeping the barrier up. Michael grunts a little where he's lying by his feet.

“What?” Flint asks sounding confused, but Hunter attacks again immediately, a look on his face that Alex doesn’t really recognize.

Alex carelessly flicks his fingers and the fireballs reverse their course heading back towards them.

Flint teleports them out of the way, and Alex drops to his knees beside Michael who coughs up blood and curses the Mane name.

“That’s fair,” Alex says or thinks he says. His throat vibrates weirdly, and Michael’s eyes snap up to him, brow furrowing as he tilts his head and looks at Alex.

Alex wants to ask what he’s looking for, when he moves, reacting immediately as Andro’s attention gets caught by something behind them, and he stands pushing hard with his hands and sending Hunter flying backwards, towards Flint.

His specialty is telekinesis but it wasn’t strong enough for him to move a person, something which his brothers already knew.

He hears Flint speaking, and feels Michael’s hand wrap around his wrist.

Alex turns to him, feeling relief at the fact that he’s standing on his own two feet, and Michael’s eyes dart between his, before he closes his eyes and concentrates.

Alex feels him calling Andro, and feels how Andro reacts immediately, and how Michael’s fingers go even tighter around Alex’s wrist.

Michael’s eyes snap open, and they look betrayed and accusing, and Alex opens up his mouth to speak, when he hears a high pitched sound that makes him fall to his knees, holding his head in his hands, as it seems like his ears start to bleed.

Michael drops to his knees beside him, and Alex looks over as the noise stops suddenly to see Hunter holding a whistle in his hands with a spell shining bright white carved on it. He looks like he just figured something out, and Alex remembers that Jacob told him that Hunter knows the truth.

Before he can open his mouth to say anything, he feels Michael’s hands wrap around his shoulders and he blinks and they’re in the junkyard, landing hard on the floor, right inside of Andro’s protective circle.

Andro decides to completely damn him in Michael’s eyes, and lets Alex go, tearing away from him in wisps of black and purple smoke, and appearing beside them a small cat that dissolves into thin air as soon as Michael darts a look at them leaving Alex alone to deal with Michael.

Alex inhales deeply, and blinks rapidly when Michael starts speaking, asking questions too fast for Alex to understand or answer. His hands on Alex’s shoulders shaking him a little as though that would get him to answer faster.

“-you didn’t want Isobel to see you this morning, isn't it? Because you still had Andro’s essence in your blood!”

“Yes,” Alex answers interrupting the flow of words and making Michael give him an incredulous look.

Alex takes a deep breath, feeling more and more like himself given that he hadn’t used much of Andro’s strength to fight his brothers. “But not for the reasons you’re thinking.”

“Andro is _my_ familiar, pieces of my essence brought together by magic, the only way for you to be able to do  _ that _ ,” he waves his hand in Alex’s direction. “Is if you have-”

“They’re mine too!” Alex says interrupting him again, and Michael’s incredulous look gains an edge.

“That’s not possi-” he starts, and Alex cuts him off again.

“Trust me,” he says and shakes his head when Michael looks away from him. “I know that it’s impossible, okay? I wasn’t expecting it when I first met them, but I’m telling you the truth.”

“How?” Michael asks voice tight. “Was it what your father-?”

“No,” Alex says immediately. “It has nothing to do with him, but it did happen that day.”

Alex swallows and scrubs his hands into his hair, wincing as he pulls against a cut right behind his ear.

“How much do you remember about the spell we did before-before we-?” Alex’s voice trails off as Michael looks back at him, and raises an eyebrow pointedly.

Alex shakes his head and looks away from him. “Anyway, the spell fused our essences together, and when we had sex it sealed the bond, but that curse and the immediate distance tore it before it could settle and while I had a place where the pieces of your essence could find an outlet, you didn’t have that.”

Michael looks at him intently, and Alex swallows hard.

“That’s not all,” Michael says, and his gaze goes even more intent.

“It should've killed both of us,” Alex admits. “But luckily, I found myself in Germany that night.”

“Where in Germany?” Michael demands almost immediately, brow furrowing.

“Munich,” Alex says after a few seconds, and Michael’s gaze intensifies.

“What aren’t you telling me?”

“A lot of things,” Alex admits, and Michael jerks back like Alex tried to punch him. “I’m trying to keep you safe, but I think I just made a mistake.”

He inhales shakily and moves so that his feet are spread out in front of him.

Michael just sits back on his heels and continues to watch Alex like he’s trying to read his mind.

“What mistake?” Michael demands when Alex doesn’t say anything.

“My father has been trying to lure me back here to kill me in an attempt to break your heart so that he can fulfill one part of the Prophecy that Mimi had that day which was the reason that they smuggled me to Europe in the first place.”

Michael looks at him blinking his eyes rapidly, mouth open as though he’s about to speak, but Alex just keeps talking before he can.

“And I think Hunter just figured out that they have it the wrong way around.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading !! <3 And if you have any questions, just ask!! I'll be more than happy to answer =D


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